2010 April
This weekend, it’s WonderCon!
WonderCon
WonderCon kicks off tomorrow at the Moscone Center South in San Francisco, and runs through Sunday. Guests include Murphy Anderson, Sergio Aragonés, Joe Kubert, Frank Cho, Amanda Conner, Darwyn Cooke, Colleen Doran, David Finch, Geoff Johns, Adam Kubert, Jimmy Palmiotti, Darick Robertson, James Robinson, Greg Rucka, Gail Simone, Ethan Van Sciver, Kevin Smith, Judd Winick, Michael Chiklis and many more.
You can find the complete programming schedule here, and if you have an iPhone, they have an app that details panel times, maps and all that good stuff. Download it here. Some of the other highlights include:
- World premiere of Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D trailer on Friday
- A screening of Kick-Ass on Saturday
- 35mm Theater Screenings of The Uncensored Last Unicorn (whoah, there was an uncensored version? Naughty!)
- Last Gasp 40th Anniversary Art Show – 21 and over
- After hours events at the Cartoon Art Museum, Isotope Comics, Comix Experience and Mission: Comics & Art
- DC Direct and Graphitti Designs will have some exclusive action figures at the show: Black Lantern Hal Jordan and White Lantern Sinestro. For details on how to buy them (you’ll need to win the lotto, it sounds like) click here.
- April 1, 2010 @ 03:19 PM by JK Parkin
Public service announcement: Tom Brevoort has a Formspring
Tom Brevoort
This is old news if you, like me, follow Tom Brevoort’s blog and Twitter account with near-religious zeal. But Marvel’s Senior VP – Executive Editor and candidate for Comics’ Most Outspoken Editor has set up an account with Formspring, the service dedicated solely to allowing readers to ask any question they like of its users. Needless to say, it’s a match made in Web 2.0 heaven.
Recent topics include potential copyright infringement by artists and strippers, how novelists or journalists or would-be interns could get work at Marvel, how powerful the Sentry is, the relative merits of back-up stories and the $3.99 price point, why DC doesn’t use recap pages, Jean Grey, Jean Grey, and more Jean Grey, and the list goes on and on — and that’s just over the past day or so.
Sure, it’s rendering my job here partially obsolete, but journalistic ethics dictate that I had to let y’all know. Go ask him somethin’, why don’t you?
- April 1, 2010 @ 02:46 PM by Sean T. Collins
Detroit Steel: ‘Blackwater-meets-NASCAR’ in new Iron Man storyline
from Invincible Iron Man #25
Following up on the earlier report today from G4 on the storyline for Invincible Iron Man #25, Marvel.com talks to writer Matt Fraction about Detroit Steel, “a new line of corporate enforcers” that will plague Tony Stark in a new storyline called “Resilient.”
“He is what follows in the hole left behind by Iron Man once Tony Stark leaves the world stage,” Fraction said. “Tony hasn’t been around to protect the regular interests that he might have during his time running Stark Industries or running S.H.I.E.L.D. And now that he’s back, he’s made it clear he doesn’t want to get back into the geo-political side of things necessarily. Detroit Steel is what happens in that absence. He is a sort of Blackwater-meets-NASCAR corporate-sponsored armored enhanced guy available for hire to the highest bidder for whatever cause around the round. [Laughs] Basically, Iron Man’s worst nightmare of what he could become. An absolute perversion of everything he is.”
Read more about the new character and check out more of Salvador Larroca’s art at the link above.
- April 1, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by JK Parkin
Your video of the day: ComicsPRO honors Levitz, Kalish with awards
ComicsPRO 2010 Industry Appreciation Award from BSIComics on Vimeo.
As Kevin mentioned a few days ago, the comics retailer organization ComicsPRO honored former DC Comics president and publisher Paul Levitz with the first ComicsPRO Industry Appreciation Award and Carol Kalish, former direct sales manager at Marvel, with the posthumous ComicsPRO Industry Appreciation Award. You can now watch the video of the award presentation above or on the ComicsPro website.
- April 1, 2010 @ 01:30 PM by JK Parkin
The Carrier digital graphic novel to be available on iPad Saturday
I spoke with Evan Young last year about his iPhone graphic novel The Carrier. It’s about a guy wakes up in a dark room with no idea how he got there, who he is, or why a titanium briefcase is shackled to his wrist, and it mixes traditional comic book storytelling with various real-world iPhone features, including geolocation, email and messaging.
Young sent over word this morning that The Carrier will be one of the launch applications for Apple’s new iPad this Saturday.
“The Carrier will help showcase the iPad comic book experience to a world that is extremely interested in the potential of this new device,” Yougn said in a press release. “A lot is being said about what the iPad can do for the comic book industry and publishers of other types of media. As a small-press publisher and creator, all I can say is, we’ll see. For now, let’s buckle in for the ride.”
- April 1, 2010 @ 12:52 PM by JK Parkin
There’s nothing funnier than a fake obituary for an 87-year-old man, right? [Updated]
Stan Lee responds
During my six years, on and off, of comics linkblogging, I’ve come to loathe certain times of year: the week before a major holiday, when the industry all but shuts down; the week before Comic-Con, when publishers hold tight to anything resembling news; and April Fool’s Day, when the Internet is even less trustworthy than usual.
That last one — which, as I’m sure you realize by now, is today — typically involves mildly amusing, if not altogether believable, reports about minor websites being purchased by major corporations, out-of-left-field directors signing on for big movies, and so on. Occasionally a post is plausible enough to fall for, and then feel silly about later. But usually they’re just annoying.
Every once in a while, though, there’s an April Fool’s “joke” that rockets past “annoying” and lands squarely in the category of “poor taste” or “WTF were they thinking?”
Take, for instance, this post: It’s a fake obituary — a faux-bit, if you will — for 87-year-old comics legend Stan Lee. Headlined “IN MEMORIAM: Stan Lee,” it contained, at least initially, a photo of Smilin’ Stan above the dates 1922-2010. The brief post went on to list some of Lee’s accomplishments and noted “that an upcoming episode of The Big Bang Theory which may be his last television performance ever.”
I’m hesitant to call out another blog, but it’s poor form, and not even remotely funny. When someone pointed that out in the comments, a blog contributor responded, “What? That we want to honor Stan Lee?” Ah, yes. Honoring Stan Lee.
Edits have been made to the original post, removing the date of death from the photo caption, and dropping a reference in the text to “sad news,” making me think someone realized a line had been crossed. It’s a little more difficult to scrub the post title/epitaph, though.
Stan Lee, to the best of my knowledge, remains hale and hearty, and appears more energetic than many half his age. What’s more, his Twitter feed is far more entertaining than any April Fool’s “joke.”
Update: The post has been deleted from the blog. In the comments section of our post, a Big Shiny Robot contributor writes, in part: “I want to apologize for this. Our execution was clumsy and we though it could have been funny, but we’d clearly crossed a line. We tried to keep it so that we didn’t actually say anything in the article that implied anything, but we were trying to be clever with the format. … It didn’t work. We’re sorry if this caused anyone more than the standard April Fool’s day distress.”
- April 1, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
Everyone’s A Critic | A roundup of comic book reviews and thinkpieces
Vol. 8 of Pluto
Johanna Draper Carlson reads the much-dreaded final volume of Pluto and mulls over the whole concept: ” And why would someone make a gripping story for adults out of an Astro Boy story? Isn’t that like doing War and Peace with Mickey Mouse? Surprisingly, no. It plays off of all the strengths of the medium in an approachable way.”
Graphic Novel Reporter’s John Hogan interviews Andrew McGinn, creator of The Legacy, a satire on comic-strip artists: “I’d love to see cartoonists take a cue from Pixar, whose films appeal to everyone on all sorts of different levels, but maybe they’re just not up to it. Besides, Jim Davis is already selling plenty of stuff with Garfield printed on it, so why rock the boat?”
Derik Badman learned French so you don’t have to, and he uses his skillz to read and review La Bande Dessinne, Mode D’Emploi (roughly, “Comics User’s Guide”).
Caroline Small explains why an ad qualifies as a “found comic.”
Oliver Ho reviews Noir, an anthology of dark little comics compiled by Dark Horse.
Alex Dueben talks to Taki Soma about her post-apocalyptic comic Rapture, created with her then fiancee/then husband Mike Oeming.
Richard Bruton reviews MeZolith, one of the graphic novel spinoffs of the sadly defunct UK kids’ line The DFC. Hopefully they will follow in the footsteps of big brother 2000AD and start a U.S. line.
- April 1, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Rummaging through the attic
Frank Miller on censorship
Maybe it’s spring cleaning time, or maybe everyone is just on a history kick, but it seems like bloggers are coming up with all sorts of interesting bits and pieces of comics history lately.
At Thought Balloonists, Charles Hatfield posts 25 vintage Dick Giordano covers to mark the artist’s passing, while at The Comics Journal, Gary Groth resurrects a 1980 interview with Giordano (part one of three).
This isn’t quite as old, but Jeet Heer finally gets around to posting the transcript of a 2005 panel that included Chip Kidd, Seth, and Chris Ware (part one, part two).
And as Chris mentioned earlier this month, Steve Bissette has been recounting the battle between freelancers and editors over in-house censorship at Marvel and DC, complete with all sorts of interesting ephemera. He seems to have wound up the series, so Scott McCloud provides a handy index, and Mark Evanier provides a summary and some commentary.
- April 1, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by Brigid Alverson
Invincible Iron Man #25 to feature new character, Hammer Industries
G4′s Blair Butler shares some Iron Man comic news in the latest edition of Fresh Ink, which unfortunately stops playing about 45 seconds in … and right when she’s talking about the big news. The video is working now!
What she does reveal, however, is that a new character named Detroit Steel will be introduced in Invincible Iron Man #25, just as Hammer Industries returns to the comic. (Hammer Industries will play a role in the second Iron Man film). The company is now run by Justine Hammer, Justin Hammer’s daughter, who you may remember was under the Crimson Cowl hood in Thunderbolts some years back. I think Justin Hammer was last seen being shot into space in a block of ice, in the Bad Blood mini-series … although maybe he made a return and I just missed it.
Here’s the video:
- April 1, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by JK Parkin
Bon voyage, Blackest Night — but where was the Final Crisis love?
Darkness and light: Final Crisis hardcover by J.G. Jones; Blackest Night #8 variant by Doug Mahnke
Yesterday the eighth and final issue of Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis’s hit event comic Blackest Night came out, and DC has been celebrating its successful conclusion (how about that fold-out spread, huh???) in grand fashion. On Tuesday, DC’s official blog, The Source, hosted an open thread for fans to share their favorite Blackest Night moments and memories. Source blogger and PR guru Alex Segura posted a heartfelt encomium to the series, its spinoffs, and its creators once it wrapped on Wednesday. Today, editor Eddie Berganza contributed a eulogy of his own.
All well-deserved, as far as I’m concerned: Blackest Night clearly worked for its intended audience, myself included. A hook everyone could understand, a huge (and fun!) expansion of the Green Lantern mythos that convincingly roped in characters from the Flash to Lex Luthor to Hawk and Dove, rock-solid art from Ivan Reis, perhaps the most t-shirt-friendly concept in comics history…I had a hoot with this book and its parallel Green Lantern tie-ins as well, and judging from the uniformly positive fan feedback in the comments for Segura’s tribute, I’m far from alone.
- April 1, 2010 @ 09:30 AM by Sean T. Collins
Here comes the Judge
Judge Dredd
The venerable British comic 2000AD has been a hothouse for developing talent, with creators like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison on board as well as long-running series like Judge Dredd, which was made into a movie a few years back. Great stuff, but hard to find on this side of the pond, as it was strictly an import product for American retailers and therefore distribution was spotty.
All that is about to change, as 2000AD’s parent company, game publisher Rebellion, announced plans this week for a U.S. line of 2000AD graphic novels. Launching in June with the first volume of Judge Dredd, the line will include classic and newer comics, some with new covers for the U.S. market. Aside from that, though, the comics won’t be changed much; editor Keith Richardson believes that, like Monty Python, 2000AD doesn’t need to be diluted for American readers.
The graphic novels will be available to bookstores through Simon and Schuster and to the direct market through Diamond, and Rebellion plans to release one or two a month with a price range of $17.99-$19.99.
- April 1, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Judge dismisses $750-million lawsuit against Marvel, Stan Lee [Updated]
Stan Lee
A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a $750-million lawsuit against Stan Lee and Marvel Entertainment over character rights and movie profits, Variety reports.
The lawsuit, filed in January 2009 by Stan Lee Media shareholders Jose Abadin and Christopher Belland, accused Lee of improperly transferring rights to characters like Spider-Man, Iron Man and the X-Men from the now-defunct company to Marvel in 1998. According to the claim, the defendants denied shareholders of the failed dot-com their rights to 50-percent ownership of Lee’s co-creations at Marvel. Abadin and Belland argued they, as shareholders, were owed $750 million in profits from movies based on Lee’s characters.
The suit has a complicated backstory, of course: In 1998, Marvel CEO Isaac Perlmutter used bankruptcy procedures to end Marvel’s $1 million-a-year lifetime contract with Lee, negating Lee’s assignment to the company of his rights to his co-creations. It also freed Lee to form Stan Lee Entertainment (which later merged with Stan Lee Media) with now-infamous entrepreneur Peter F. Paul. The company filed for bankruptcy in February 2001, and emerged from protection in November 2006. The lawsuit — and the $5-billion one that came before it, in March 2007 — hinged on a sequence of events that took place between August 1998, when Marvel terminated Lee’s employment, and November 1998, when Lee entered into a new agreement with the company and signed over his likeness, and any claims to characters.
On Wednesday U.S. District Court Judge Paul A. Crotty rejected the lawsuit, in part because Abadin and Belland didn’t acquire shares of Stan Lee Media until 1999, meaning they lacked standing. Further, securities claims against Lee already were settled. Crotty also rejected the plaintiffs’ copyright claims, citing the statute of limitations, and noted that Lee’s “lifetime” contract with Stan Lee Media violated California labor laws, which limits such agreements to seven years.
Update: Eriq Gardner at THR, Esq. has more details.
- April 1, 2010 @ 07:34 AM by Kevin Melrose
Marvel app for iPad confirmed, called ‘brilliant’ and ‘game-changing’
ComiXology's Marvel app for iPad
Just days before the Saturday release of Apple’s iPad, there’s confirmation that the much-anticipated media slate will feature a Marvel Comics app developed by ComiXology.
While noting that the Marvel application doesn’t yet appear in the iPad’s App Store, Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times says he’s “very impressed and excited” by what he sees: “This underscores a sentiment that everybody in comics has felt ever since rumors of an Apple tablet became tangible: that the device would finally make the experience of reading comics digitally into something that’s practical, enjoyable, and most importantly deliver the story in a way that feels like a comic book.”
David Pogue of The New York Times describes the Marvel app as “brilliant in its vividness and panel-by-panel navigation,” while BoingBoing‘s Xeni Jardin starts with “spectacular” and “game-changing” before getting a little more specific: “crisp, lucid art, the ability to navigate frame-by-frame, rendering spoilers down the page obsolete.”
But back to Ihnatko, who devotes the most amount of space to the app, and provides the most details.
“If you’re a purist who needs to see the whole page at once, you can hold the iPad in portrait mode and flip through the story as you would with a paper comic,” he writes. “You can zoom in and out as you wish, but though the iPad screen is smaller than a standard comic page (I measure it as 7.5”, compared to a comic’s 10”) it’s still crisp and readable when scaled down. Turn the iPad on its side, and a new viewing mode becomes available. In iBooks, tapping the left and right sides of the screen turns pages. In the Marvel app, it ‘moves the camera position’ forward and backwards through the story, snappily zooming in and out through the ‘units’ of the page, highlighting moments of dialogue or action.”
Developing …
- April 1, 2010 @ 06:29 AM by Kevin Melrose