2010 May
World of Hurt, Aya, Luke Cage Noir honored in annual Glyph Awards
Glyph Comics Awards
Jay Potts and his blaxploitation webcomic World of Hurt took three of the 10 Glyph Awards Friday at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Con. The awards honor “the best in comics made by, for, and about people of color.”
Aya: The Secrets Come Out and Luke Cage Noir each took two awards, while The K Chronicles by Keith Knight won for best comic strip for the fourth time in five years. Last year’s big winner, Jeremy Love’s Bayou, was nominated for several awards but didn’t win any last night.
The complete list of winners includes:
Story of the Year: Unknown Soldier #13-14; Joshua Dysart, writer, Pat Masioni, artist
Best Writer: Alex Simmons, Archie & Friends
Best Artist: Jay Potts, World of Hurt
Best Male Character: Isaiah Pastor, World of Hurt; created by Jay Potts, writer and artist
Best Female Character: Aya, Aya: The Secrets Come Out; created by Marguerite Abouet, writer, Clement Oubrerie, artist
Rising Star Award: Jay Potts, World of Hurt
Best Reprint Publication: Aya: The Secrets Come Out; Drawn & Quarterly
Best Cover: Luke Cage Noir #1; Tim Bradstreet, illustrator
Best Comic Strip: The K Chronicles; Keith Knight, writer and artist
Fan Award for Best Comic: Luke Cage Noir; Mike Benson & Adam Glass, writers, Shawn Martinbrough, artist
The Glyph Awards were started in 2005 by Rich Watson.
- May 15, 2010 @ 02:15 PM by JK Parkin
Superman attorney accuses Warner Bros. of ‘a smear campaign’
Action Comics #1
Marc Toberoff, the attorney representing the heirs of Superman’s co-creators, has responded to a lawsuit filed against him on Friday by DC Comics, calling it “baseless” and “clearly vindictive.”
The 56-page complaint, designed to discredit Warner Bros.’ legal nemesis, alleges that Toberoff “orchestrated a web of collusive agreements” with the heirs of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, leading them to reject “mutually beneficial” longtime deals with DC Comics and seek to recapture the Superman copyright.
Further, the lawsuit charges that Toberoff’s “scheme” is designed to secure for him “a majority and controlling financial stake” in the Superman rights and “preclude the heirs from freely entering into new agreements with DC Comics for the continued exploitation of Superman.”
In a press release issued Friday evening, Toberoff accuses Warner Bros. and DC of resorting to “a smear campaign disguised as a lawsuit.”
“Even before filing their new lawsuit, Warner Bros.’ press machine embarked on a well-coordinated campaign to assassinate Mr. Toberoff’s character,” the statement reads. “The baseless lawsuit and press campaign are clearly vindictive, given that Mr. Toberoff has handled a string of successful rights claims against Warner, including securing a preliminary injunction barring Warner’s infringing The Dukes of Hazzard movie in 2005.”
- May 15, 2010 @ 07:48 AM by Kevin Melrose
The Fifth Color – Get On With It! or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Heroic Age
and now for the honorary throwing things we don't like into the Sun.
Let’s move on, shall we?
Just like we moved on right about this time last year. There came a time when the shock value of Norman Osborn becoming the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. wore off and we realized the Marvel Universe was in for a Twilight Zone of a year. Evil was media friendly, good was outlawed and there was no way this was going to last. The reader just had to sit tight through Dark Reign and wait for this whole nightmare to be over.
Well, Siege is now officially over, the last issue of the four-part story handed over to us this week. Unofficially, this Event book should have been over in January, when Marvel announced that the dawn of an exciting new era would occur by bringing back the old establishment. Civil War really did change the face of modern Marvel Comics for about three years now, the idea of vigilantism and government restrictions explored in a way that flies in the face of a lot of Silver Age convention. You can’t just put on a mask and run around, there are precautions to take, family to think of, morality to debate. There’s more than just the greater good to think about.
And I think we’ve all had enough time to think about it. Personally, I miss that all important line between good and evil. Spend enough time in the gray area between them and you lose your distinctiveness. Dwell on topics long enough and readers get bored, itchy and unhappy. So the long, drawn out blockade between realism and four-color storytelling is at least coming to an end, the long term battle still not won. Characters are going to be shuffled around, new teams made, some younger ones fostered in and we’re all in it to win it for this new Heroic Age.
Well, everyone but the villains.
(WARNING: No Spoilers. Because really, ‘the bad guys lose’ is a little like Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker’s father- Oop! Ruined that one!)
- May 14, 2010 @ 03:00 PM by Carla Hoffman
Thin wallets, fat bookshelves | A roundup of publishing news
WildCATS 3.0 by Dustin Nguyen
- Wildstorm will bring Joe Casey and Dustin Nguyen’s WildCATS 3.0 back into print in September.
- Wildstorm also adds another video game franchise to its publishing line, in the form of Kane & Lynch.
- Dark Horse had a few items I was unaware of in their latest round of solicitations. There’s another Grandville book coming out by Bryan Talbot called Grandville Mon Amour, and Jill Thompson’s Scary Godmother books are being collected into one huge “deluxe” edition. Also, the out-of-print Hellboy/Starman/Batman stories by James Robinson, Mike Mignola and many others are being released as a part of the Hellboy trade paperback line. There’s lots more, of course, coming from Dark Horse in August, but those jumped out at me as stuff I hadn’t heard about or missed when they were announced.
- NBM will collect Gerard Jones and Mark Badger’s Networked: Carabella on the Run in July. This is a webcomic that runs on privacyactivism.org.
- Artist David Hahn is working with comedian John Roy on a new book for Image Comics.
- Tyler James, creator of the webcomic Over, is working with Matt Zolman on a new comic called Epic.
- Sports club bars in a South Auckland, New Zealand will give away an anti “drink-driving” comic by Hicksville creator Dylan Horrocks. “An advantage with the comic medium is that people are more relaxed when they start reading one and you can reach all kinds of people and tell a story of characters making the right choice,” the creator said. Via
- May 14, 2010 @ 01:30 PM by JK Parkin
In Search of Lost ‘Time’: An interview with Dan Nadel
Art in Time
Having introduced the comics-reading public to such obscure or long-forgotten creators as Herbert Crowley, Fletcher Hanks and Walter Quermann in his seminal book Art Out of Time, editor and publisher Dan Nadel opted to try something a little different for his sequel, the recently published Art in Time.
While the new book, like its predecessor, does feature a number of barely-known or long-forgotten golden age and underground cartoonists (Sam Glanzman, John Thompson), it also offers a new look at some familiar and in some cases already well regarded figures, in the hopes of either giving scholars and fans a chance to reconsider their artistic abilities (as in the case of Mort Meskin and Pat Boyette) or re-examine their work in a new light via previously unregarded material (John Stanley, Archie artist Harry Lucey, Wonder Woman artist H.G. Peter)
I had the opportunity to talk with Nadel over email about the book and its rather specific goals recently. Though he was in the midst of celebrating all things Jack Kirbyish at the Fumetto Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland, he was kind enough to take the time to offer some thoughtful, considered responses to my flailing questions, for which I am ever grateful.
How did Art in Time develop and did it change at all in conception as you worked on it?
The first idea was actually to take well known artists like Kirby, Ditko, Everett, et al and show their lesser known work. This became a little less interesting as the reprint boom took hold. By less interesting I mean not necessary. I tend to think of books as being necessary or not necessary. And then, when necessary, as being well done and useful, or badly done and destructive. Anyhow, as an outgrowth of my publishing activities, and as a kind of strategy of moving away from any perceptions about Art Out of Time, I began to look at adventure comics a lot, particularly crime stuff like Pete Morisi and Harry Lucey. And then I thought of the underground stuff I like and realized (again — maybe I’d forgotten? I don’t know.) that what drives my “scholarly” (or whatever) interests was pretty much the same as what drives my publishing interest, i.e. in my head CF and Bill Everett are pretty much on the same playing field. So I latched onto the broad idea of “genre” comics and then went a little micro and focused on an idea of “adventure” that can include gumshoes and psychonauts and utopians. Then I really dug in and had some fun.
- May 14, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Warner Bros. sues Siegel family attorney [Updated]
Superman
The battle over the rights to Superman has taken a surprising twist, with Nikki Finke reporting that Warner Bros. aims to force Marc Toberoff to resign as the Siegel family’s attorney.
According to Finke, the studio’s new outside counsel Daniel Petrocelli filed a lawsuit today against Toberoff “raising questions about his alleged role as a financial participant in the Superman copyright and not as the attorney for the Shuster and Siegel families fighting their Superman cases.”
The lawsuit reportedly alleges that Toberoff, a longtime legal nemesis of Warner Bros., convinced the families of Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster to reject “mutually beneficial” longtime agreements with DC Comics and seek to recapture copyright to the property. Further, the studio charges that Toberoff entered into agreements with the heirs that would give him and his companies “a controlling financial interest in the families’ collective claims — leaving him as the largest financial stakeholder (47.5%), while relegating the Siegel heirs (27.5%) and Shuster heirs (25%) to minority status.”
Finke asserts that the Warner Bros. case hinges on mysterious documents removed from Toberoff’s office by one his employees. She points out that when Petrocelli defended Disney in a lengthy battle over merchandising royalties from Winnie-the-Pooh, he succeeded in having the case thrown out because the plaintiffs based part of their argument on paperwork “stolen” from a dumpster in the Disney lot.
Warner Bros. faces a ticking clock: Siegel’s heirs were awarded his share of the copyright in 2008; in 2013, the door will open for a similar reversion of rights to the Shuster estate.
Update: According to Variety, the 65-page complaint accuses Toberoff of violating copyright laws and interfering with Warner Bros.’ contractual rights, and alleges he prevented the Siegel and Shuster families “from freely entering into agreements with DC Comics — even if it was in their respective economic interest to do so.”
- May 14, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Edgar Allan Ho-Ho-Ho?
A Sickness in the Family
Vertigo has provided a few more details plus a preview of an upcoming Crime Line title they teased earlier this year. A Sickness in the Family, by Denise Mina and Antonio Fuso, is about the Usher family, who start dying violent deaths on Christmas day:
Meet the Ushers. (By the way, this name is no accident). The parents, Ted and Biddy. Grandma Martha. The three kids, William, Amy and Sam. Just a normal, middle class family gathered around the table on Christmas Day. Until they start dying very violent deaths. One by one. As secrets and resentments boil to the surface, it becomes clear there’s more than one Usher with a motive for killing off the others. But in the end, the truth turns out to be far more shocking than anyone in the ill-fated family could have imagined.
The cover is by Lee Bermejo, and according to Amazon, the book is due in October.
- May 14, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by JK Parkin
Rafael Grampá has a secret
Grampa's Wolverine
And it involves Wolverine.
- May 14, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
Your video of the day | Short film based on Jeff Lemire’s The Nobody
From "The Nobody" short film
Cartoonist Jeff Lemire points out a beautifully shot fan-made short film based on The Nobody, his Vertigo graphic novel about a stranger wrapped from head to toe in bandages who takes up residence in the motel of an isolated fishing village. You can watch the short, by Josh McCaw and Ali Borghi, after the break.
- May 14, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
Kids’ comics get some respect
A coloring page, a comic, and a mini-lesson in gender roles, all in one!
It’s about time someone came up with a blog for three-year-olds, right? Francoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman broke new ground with a line of graphic novels for “emerging readers,” as they call them, and now they are doing it agai. Benny and Penny and Their Friends features the adorable brother-and-sister mice duo created by Geoffrey Hayes (who won a Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for Benny and Penny in The Big No-No). So far there is a comics panel to print out and color and a word balloon to fill in, and new content is promised at least twice a week.
Meanwhile, Reading With Pictures is coming into the final stretch with its Kickstarter campaign. Headed by Josh Elder, the creator of Mail Order Ninja, RWP is a nonprofit that plans to research the best uses of comics in the classroom, but lest you think they are a bunch of stuffy educators, their Kickstarter project is an anthology with a cover by Jill Thompson and work by Chris Giarrusso (G-Man), Fred Van Lente (Amazing Spider-Man), Ryan Dunlavey (Action Philosophers), Jimmy Gownley (Amelia Rules) and Eric Wight (Frankie Pickle), among others.
- May 14, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Phillips reveals first cover for next Incognito series
Incognito: Bad Influences #1
Over on his blog, artist Sean Phillips teases the next Incognito series by posting a cover sketch for the first issue. The follow-up to Phillips and writer Ed Brubaker’s Eisner-nominated series is actually subtitled “Bad Influences,” Brubaker said on Twitter, saying it was “coming soonish.”
Update: Phillips has posted the final cover on his blog, which I’ve updated above.
- May 14, 2010 @ 09:30 AM by JK Parkin
Wordless Workshop
Tony Piro's dialogue-free Calamities of Nature
Today is Dialogue Free Comics Day, when webcomics creators all over the world shake off the chains of verbal narrative, send their letterers out to the pub for a drink, and draw comics that tell stories using pictures alone. (Sound effects are allowed but discouraged.) As the day goes on you can track new entries on Twitter using the tag #DFCD.
Noel Curry, the creator of the webcomic DJ Bogtrotter, came up with the idea back in March as a challenge to help him focus on the visual aspects of comics. It caught on like a mad internet meme, and Curry is collecting the worldless works at his blog. One of the interesting things about this is that since anyone can play, you get a mix of well-known comics like Box Brown’s Bellen and Tony Piro’s Calamities of Nature with curious little comics from all corners of the internet (with a wide range of quality), so it’s a chance to discover something new.
- May 14, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Could the troubled Spider-Man musical tour sports arenas?
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
When, and if, the troubled Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark finally opens, many predict it will go down as the biggest flop in Broadway history. However, the New York Post’s Michael Riedel reports producers have big plans for the $52-million production, including a national tour.
It won’t be just any national tour, though: Riedel’s source says it will target 10,000-seat sports arenas. However, Broadway observers doubt director Julie Taymor’s Spider-Man will even be able to fill New York City’s 1,700-seat Hilton Theatre consistently. And it will have to do just that — sell out every performance — for four to five years just to break even.
But the production has a long way to go before it gets to that point. Originally set to open in March, “cash-flow obstacles” triggered delays that eventually led to the loss of co-stars Evan Rachel Ward (Mary Jane) and Alan Cumming (Green Goblin). Relative newcomer Reeve Carney remains as Peter Parker/Spider-Man — “I guess he’s the only original cast member with nothing better to do,” Riedel writes — with Patrick Page (Taymor’s The Lion King) reportedly being offered the role of Green Goblin.
Now it looks as if Spider-Man will start rehearsals this summer, begin previews in October and open in November. Of course, we’ve been down that road before.
Featuring a score by Bono and the Edge, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark could be the most expensive musical in Broadway history, with weekly production costs of more than $1 million — hundreds of thousands of dollars more than elaborate shows like Mary Poppins and West Side Story.
- May 14, 2010 @ 08:32 AM by Kevin Melrose
Jeff Lemire to write new Superboy series
Superboy, by Pier Gallo
DC Comics announced this morning that Jeff Lemire will launch a Superboy ongoing series later this year with artist Pier Gallo.
A one-off co-feature in August’s Action Comics #982 will kick off the new title.
Lemire, an award-winning cartoonist best known for his Essex County Trilogy and the Vertigo monthly Sweet Tooth, also is writing DC’s upcoming Brightest Day: The Atom Special and an Atom co-feature in Adventure Comics. Gallo most recently illustrated Adventure Comics #8-10.
“I am really excited to be taking over the adventures of Conner Kent/Superboy in a new monthly series!” Lemire tells the DC Universe blog. “The book will combine many of the classic touchstones of the Superboy mythos along with new supporting characters, new villains and new ideas, building a strong foundation that can support the Boy of Steel for years to come. I really want to work with our amazing artist Pier Gallo to combine a classic storytelling feel with a thoroughly modern sensibility and explore what it would really be like to be a super-powered teenager, in the heart of rural America.”
- May 14, 2010 @ 06:45 AM by Kevin Melrose
Grumpy Old Fan | A week full-to-bursting with birds, bats, and Booster
The Return Of Bruce Wayne #1
This is a pretty big week for DC.
I know I said that four weeks ago, when Brightest Day #0 and The Flash vol. 3 #1 appeared in comics shops, and I don’t want to take too much away from that.
Still, today saw the debuts of The Return Of Bruce Wayne #1, the relaunched Birds Of Prey #1, and Keith Giffen returning to his old charges from Justice League International. Not unsurprisingly, each of these comics builds on many years’ worth of stories, and each nevertheless aims to be accessible to the uninitiated. Therefore, this week let’s see how effective these four introductory issues are.
SPOILERS FOLLOW for Return Of Bruce Wayne #1, Birds Of Prey #1, Booster Gold #32, and Justice League: Generation Lost #1.
- May 13, 2010 @ 02:15 PM by Tom Bondurant