2010 May
Start reading now: Max Overacts
Max Overacts
Canaan Grall, the creator of the Zuda comic Celadore, has just launched a new comics site of his own, and he’s starting it off with Max Overacts, a zany-kid strip with a touch of Calvin and Hobbes. The title pretty much describes the concept, but Grall pulls it off pretty well with a nice retro design, a kid who manages to be smart-alecky without being annoying, and a cute cast of side characters (including Max’s ventriloquist dummy, another retro touch). While Max does overact in each comic, Grall has a fairly restrained style, so the whole package works without seeming over the top.
Grall says he first thought of Max Overacts as a picture book, then decided it would work better as a comic and drew it as a Zuda entry. He had second thoughts, however, and posted it on his site. (Interestingly, the Zuda format looks pretty good on a web page with the comic at a natural size, neither too small nor full-page, and without the annoyingly slow Flash interface.) He is talking about putting up another comic once he works his way through the 60 screens of Max, but I wish he would stick with this one, as it has a lot of potential.
- May 6, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by Brigid Alverson
Straight for the art | 2010 Doug Wright Awards art auction
Catwoman by Jillian Tamaki
Since my repertoire of Canada-based witticisms is entirely derived from half-remembered viewings of Strange Brew, I’m just gonna skip the clever opening and point you straight to this rather amazing gallery of (mostly) DC Comics superheroes drawn by (mostly) alternative comics artists (entirely) from Canada. It’s The Doug Wright Awards 2010 All-Star All-Canadian Art Auction, in which these pieces are being sold on eBay to help fund the annual award program. That’s Jillian Tamaki’s gorgeous take on Catwoman above (DC editors, are you paying attention?); click here to see Kate Beaton’s Wonder Woman, Chester Brown’s Batman, Jeff Lemire’s Hawkman & Atom, Matt Forsythe’s Hawkman, Marc Bell’s Iron Man (guess he didn’t get the “DC Comics characters” memo), original art from Bryan Lee O’Malley and more, and click here to start bidding.
(via Tom Spurgeon)
- May 6, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
Vertigo Crime line to expand with Rat Catcher and Noche Roja
Art by Jason Latour
Vertigo this morning announced two additions to its Vertigo Crime line of original graphic novels: Rat Catcher, by Andy Diggle and Victor Ibanez, and Noche Roja, by Simon Oliver and Jason Latour. Both titles will be released in 2011.
According to the imprint’s blog, Rat Catcher follows an undercover FBI agent and a mob hitman embroiled in “a high-stakes game of cat and mouse.”
In Noche Roja, the murders of young women South of the Mexican border “hide a deeper, darker corruption” that retired private investigator Jack Cohen is determined to expose. Presumably, this is the noir project that artist Latour has referred to on his blog as “the beast.” He’s been teasing panels from the book there and on his Flickr account.
The “sub-imprint” and black-and-white hardcovers was announced in 2008 at Comic-Con International, and launched in August 2009 with Filthy Rich, by Brian Azzarello and Victor Santos, and Dark Entries, by Ian Rankin and Werther Dell’Edera.
- May 6, 2010 @ 09:28 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Irredeemable, from BOOM!
Publishing | Haven Distributors will offer direct-market retailers “the deepest discount option available” — 50 percent off the cover price — on the full line of BOOM! Studios titles, undercutting Diamond Comic Distributors. The deal expands on an agreement announced in October for distribution of the publisher’s second printings and specialty items.
Johanna Draper Carlson has commentary: “I’m not sure current readers understand how big a deal it is for a publisher to thumb their nose at what used to be the biggest elephant in the comic industry. Saying “go buy our books elsewhere, they’re cheaper” is amazingly brazen, but this isn’t the first time Boom! has tweaked Diamond, and they’re quite ambitious with their distribution plans.” [Haven Distributors, BOOM! Studios]
Conventions | Comic-Con’s David Glanzer tells Tom Spurgeon that the price of exhibitor badges was increased from $75 to $200 in part to curb their abuse. [The Comics Reporter]
Conventions | Christopher Butcher weighs in on San Diego’s “routinely horrible” treatment of Comic-Con International, which is being aggressively courted by Los Angeles and Anaheim. [Comics212]
- May 6, 2010 @ 08:51 AM by Kevin Melrose
The HTMLcomics shutdown: A bit of background
Gregory Steven Hart
Although the press release was just sent out on Wednesday, HTMLcomics.com was apparently shut down a few weeks ago. Posters on this bulletin board were puzzled about where it went in April, and someone linked to this comment on Yahoo:
I just called today (4/22) and spoke to the guy’s wife. She said that he (the site owner) got in a LOT of trouble, the FBI got involved etc – and the site will not be back ever. It’s completely down. *sigh* back to reading comics the old fashioned way.
There are some interesting angles to this. It seems to be the first time that comics publishers have banded together like this to take down a site, rather than just sending out cease-and-desist notices, but it also may be unique. The owner of the site, Gregory Steven Hart, operated out in the open and made no attempt to conceal what he was doing; indeed, he seems to be convinced he was running a legal enterprise.
- May 6, 2010 @ 05:26 AM by Brigid Alverson
Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs | Moonstone Books
Moonstone's Aaron Shaps and Joe Gentile
Because Moonstone Books publishes a lot of Pulp adventure comics (and prose anthologies), I originally wanted to try to fold this recap of their C2E2 panel into last week’s article on the Pulp Fiction one. That article ran long though, so it works best to just give Moonstone their own week. And they need it too because they’ve got a lot going on.
Their panel was moderated by Ed Catto from Captain Action Enterprises and consisted of Co-Publisher/Editor-in-Chief Joe Gentile, writers Aaron Shaps, Mike Bullock, Len Kody, and Jeff Lemke, Co-Publisher/Art Director Dave Ulanski, artist J Anthony Kosar, and Co-Editor Lori Gentile.
The company made lots of announcements for new books and series. Buckaroo Bonzai will become an ongoing series by Tom DeFalco in the Fall. Steven Grant will be writing a new Captain Action series. There’s also going to be a new Kolchak ongoing called Night Stalker Files.
One of the most intriguing announcements though was for a mini-series illustrated by Kosar called The Spider: The Iron Man War. It sounds almost illegal until you realize that it’s an adaptation of one of Norvell W Page’s original Spider stories called “Satan’s Murder Machines” that appears to have been a direct inspiration for the creation of Iron Man (and was also apparently used by Siegel and Shuster for a Superman newspaper strip).
Other superhero inspirations, classic characters, female heroes, and clunky robots after the break.
- May 5, 2010 @ 08:33 PM by Michael May
Publishers get together to beat down pirates [Updated]
The FBI has served a warrant on the pirate site HTMLcomics.com and shut down their servers.
Acting on a warrant that alleged criminal copyright infringement, they shut down the site and confiscated the servers, according to this press release from the law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP.
According to the release, DC, Marvel, Dark Horse Comics, Bongo Comics, Archie Comics, Conan Properties Int’l LLC, Mirage Studios Inc., and United Media set aside their differences, formed a consortium, and lawyered up in order to shut down the site, which claimed an average of 1.6 million visits per day and offered 6,630,021 pages of comics available for unrestricted reading.
Rich Johnston blogged about these guys a few weeks ago, noting that they claimed that they weren’t violating any copyright laws because they make the pages available for viewing online but not for download. Of course, it took his commenters about 30 seconds to defeat that, and anyway, the Department of Justice begs to differ with them on the legal issues.
UPDATE: Colleen Doran has some experience with this site and its proprietor.
We’ll have more on this as it develops.
The full press release is below.
- May 5, 2010 @ 03:57 PM by Brigid Alverson
Zudist Colony finale: Previous winners discuss the end of Zuda’s monthly contests
With Zuda announcing late last week that they were ending their monthly webcomics competitions, I thought I’d reach out to some of the contest’s previous participants to see what they thought of the change. I heard back from several of them — some simply responded, while others agreed to answer a few questions (hence the difference in responses below).
Those who responded include:
- Robert Burke Richardson, Absolute Magnitude
- Aaron Alexovich, Eldritch
- Sam Little, The Hammer
- David Gallaher, High Moon
- Dwight L. MacPherson, Sidewise
- Johnny Zito and Tony Trov, Black Cherry Bombshells and LaMorte Sisters
- Matthew Petz, War of the Woods
And here’s what they had to say ….
- May 5, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by JK Parkin
Send us your Shelf Porn!
Today’s edition of Shelf Porn is another special celebrity edition, as Marc Guggenheim, writer of Amazing Spider-Man, Resurrection and many other comics titles (and who has also worked on a few television shows and movies, including the upcoming Green Lantern film), gives us a tour of his home office — complete with spinner rack, action figures and much more.
Remember, if you’d like to see your shelves featured here, just send your write-up and pictures to jkparkin@yahoo.com. And now here’s Marc …
- May 5, 2010 @ 12:55 PM by JK Parkin
Californians can sport a Snoopy license plate, support museums
The Snoopy license plate
The California Association of Museums has launched a campaign to have a Snoopy drawing by Charles Schulz appear on a special California license plate. Proceeds from sales of the plates would establish a sustainable grant program to support state museums.
But for that to happen, at least 7,500 California drivers have to register interest in a Snoopy plate. Once there are enough interested Peanuts fans, the state will begin collecting a $50 fee from those who want the plate (more if you want it personalized). Curiously, The Snoopy Plate website doesn’t seem to list a deadline for registration.
The Snoopy plate is being made possible by Jean Schulz, the Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates and United Media Licensing, who are granting royalty-free rights to the California Association of Museums.
- May 5, 2010 @ 12:30 PM by Kevin Melrose
Straight for the art | Michael Cho’s Best American Comics cover
Cover for "The Best American Comics 2010," by Michael Cho
On his blog, illustrator Michael Cho unveils his cover for the 2010 edition of Houghton Mifflin’s The Best American Comics, which is guest-edited by Neil Gaiman. “Like most of my favourite cover assignments, the concept for this one came together pretty intuitively and I had an idea of what kind of response the image should provoke,” Cho writes.
On Twitter the artist also offers a look at a beautiful Peter Parker/Spider-Man painting that he’ll be taking with him this weekend to the Toronto Comics Art Festival.
- May 5, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Start reading now: Velia, Dear
Velia, Dear
Rina Piccolo is a veteran comic strip artist; she provides the Wednesday action for Six Chix and also draws Tina’s Groove, which is syndicated by King Features. Now she’s launching a new strip, Velia, Dear, about a thirtysomething Italian woman who moves back home to take care of her aging mother. In the blog that accompanies the strip, Piccolo explains:
While I continue to love the world of the newspaper comics page, I just feel I have so much more to give, and — I gotta tell you — the independence of an on-line strip, with its liberties and lack of censorship, sounds like a hat I want to try on right now, just for laughs.
So far sex lives, tampons, and birth control have been mentioned, but the strip isn’t pushing any boundaries just yet. The comic is mostly three-panel gag strips, and Piccolo has a nice, flowing, comic-strip style with a bit of extra flair to it that is easy on the eyes. It’s easy to see this working as a newspaper strip (minus the tampon jokes) but it will be interesting to see if Piccolo stretches the form a bit. Balancing the single life with taking care of one’s aging parent could be comedy gold if it’s handled right, and so far, Velia, Dear looks promising.
- May 5, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by Brigid Alverson
‘Most likely to emo out all over the place’
Image Comics sent over another teaser today for Morning Glories, the new series by Nick Spencer, Joe Eisma and Rodin Esquejo. Check out the previous teasers here, here and here.
- May 5, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
Lit agent: Can’t write? Write graphic novels!
Or you could just go wordless...
Well, not exactly, but newcomer Brianne Ogden told Mediabistro that graphic novels might be just the thing for someone who is more storyteller than stylist:
There are writers with storytelling talent strong enough to bend light waves, but they may not be wordsmiths. A graphic novel might be just the thing for them. Storytelling is the lynchpin of a graphic novel; there is just simply not enough text to require facile wordplay.
If that piques your interest, Ogden wants to see books about angels and demons, fairies and monsters—no vampires, please. “Dark and twisted tales, philosophical principles, sci-fi, mash-ups of any kind, steampunk, mermaids, and kooks. Not all in one book—but I suppose that would be one heck of a story,” she said.
- May 5, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by Brigid Alverson
Goats goes on hiatus
Goats, volume 3
The webcomic Goats has been running for 13 years, and creator Jonathan Rosenberg is about two years away from the big climax of the story, but now he’s having second thoughts and putting the comic on hiatus while he rethinks this whole comics-creator-career thing. He writes in the blog:
While I’m happy with what I’ve done creatively, the webcomics medium rewards quick, easy updates with traffic. Long, continuity-filled stories like Goats that take a long time between updates tend to stagnate, although there are certainly folks more talented than I who can pull off this difficult feat.
That’s a pretty basic issue, and Rosenberg isn’t the first one to run up against it. The blog growly beast has done a whole series of interviews with creators of longform webcomics (sadly, also on hiatus), and my former Digital Strips colleague Jason Sigler rounded up a bunch of links to discussions on the topic back in 2008. Some creators, like Spike (Templar, Arizona) continue to update their comics regularly, while others, like Meredith Gran (Octopus Pie) update a chapter at a time. RSS feeds make following a comic like that a no-brainer.
- May 5, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson