2010 June
Geoff Johns and Matt Fraction plot Iron Man/Green Lantern crossover, sorta
Tony Stark and Hal Jordan, together at last? Not quite: The big Iron Man/Green Lantern crossover plotted out by writers Matt Fraction and Geoff Johns yesterday exists only in their respective Twitter accounts. But still, it’s fun to read what the writers in charge of their respective universes’ cocky skirt-chasing sci-fi superheroes who are the basis of big blockbuster movies have to say about the two heroes meeting up.
Inspired by Fraction’s facetious tweets about the powers of each of the ten rings wielded by Iron Man villain the Mandarin (including making phone calls that never drop and the ability to TiVo three shows at once), Johns got the ball rolling. Below you’ll find their crossover conversation, tweaked slightly for clarity and featuring guest appearances by editor Steve Wacker and Avengers writer Brian Michael Bendis…
artist unknown (let us know in the comments)
Johns: @mattfraction What can the Mandarin’s rings do? Iron Man/Green Lantern xover…!
Fraction: @geoffjohns0 together, all of ‘em can save the direct market…! #LETSDOTHISTHING
Fraction [later]: wait weren’t me and @geoffjohns0 plotting our GreenLantern/IronMan xover in real tweettime? wasn’t mandarin getting a red ring or something?
Johns: Then Hal loses his ring, but finds one of Tony’s suits. And thinks it’s the coolest thing to ever pilot…
Fraction: Tony rebuilds a shattered power battery with repulsor tech and discovers he can make this weird ring do what he thinks…
Stephen Wacker: @GeoffJohns0 @mattfraction SinestrO.D.O.K.
Johns: And the SinestrO.D.O.K. Corps
Fraction: how big of a red ring would a red ring have to be to fit around fin fang foom’s neck like a collar? #blooddragon!!!AAIIEEEEEEEE
Johns: Fin Fang Foom you have great rage in your heart! Welcome to the Red Lantern Corps!
Fraction: “Pepper Potts, this is Carol Ferris. Carol, meet…”
Johns: “Hal? I was,um, just having a drink with…” “Tony. Tony Stark. I hear this ring belongs to you…but I can’t get it off.”
Johns: In the suit, Hal plays chicken with the Quinjet. The Avengers want to know who stole Tony’s armor.
Brian Michael Bendis: @GeoffJohns0 @mattfraction hey!! No quinjet or avengers unless i get some tie in/ spin off action!!
Johns: @BRIANMBENDIS @mattfraction Avengers/Green Lantern/Iron Man We last left Hal Jordan in Iron Man’s armor battling the Avengers…
Red Lantern Fin Fang Foom and the SinestrO.D.O.K. Corps alone make a real-world version of this imaginary crossover worth the price of admission, don’t you think?
- June 9, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
Pushing back on the scanners
Pirates' booty
The late, lamented (by some) HTMLcomics.com looked like a bootleg site. Most manga scan sites do not. They feature nicely designed home pages, a scattering of unobtrusive ads, and an impressive array of manga. In addition to series that haven’t been officially licensed yet, they post recent chapters of Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece from the latest issues of the Japanese Shonen Jump and full volumes of older series, not fan translations but simple scans from the American editions. It’s all free, and the interface is simple and easy to use. Several of the sites even have iPod and iPad apps that draw from their databases. It all looks legit, and many users may not realize they are reading their manga on a bootleg site. In fact, one of them even has the following legal disclaimer (name of site obscured to avoid giving them any more publicity):
MangaXXX and all of it’s original content and images are the sole property of the staff of this site and it’s contributors. Furthermore, MangaXXX is protected by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Unauthorized use of any original pieces originating from MangaXXX are subject to criminal and civil penalties. If it is found that you have taken original work from MangaXXX, you will be asked to remove it willingly and peacefully within 24 hours, or risk possible legal action against you or your website.
This is hilarious on many levels, from the misuse of “it’s” (no apostrophe in the possessive—don’t they teach that in law school?) to the fact that what MangaXXX is doing is in fact prohibited, not protected, by the DMCA, to the mere idea that a site that consists almost entirely of stolen content would attempt to take legal action against anyone who stole their “original work.”
Yesterday, the manga publishers fired the first shot across the bow by announcing they had formed a coalition to “take aggressive action” against 30 sites that it has identified as infringing their copyrights. A quick check this morning showed that the better-known ones were all still up and running, and no one had taken down the latest chapter of Naruto; if they are quaking in their boots, they are hiding it well.
- June 9, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Quesada: Digital Iron Man will cost more than print
Invincible Iron Man Annual #1
When CBR’s Kiel Phegley interviewed Marvel CCO Joe Quesada for the latest Cup O’Joe column, it was inevitable that Invincible Iron Man Annual #1 would come up. Although Marvel announced last week that the 80-page comic would be released simultaneously in print and digital format, they quite deliberately did not say how much the digital version would cost. So Kiel asked a direct question and got a direct answer:
The Iron Man comic is over 60 pages, and in print it’s priced at $4.99, but on average for that kind of page count, we would have priced it at $5.99 or broken it up into three $2.99 issues. Our comics on the Marvel App are priced at $1.99 and the way the annual is written it breaks up nicely into three chapters perfectly, so that’s how we’ll break It up in the app. So, when you do the math on this one, the direct market comic shop has the advantage in price on this one, and we’ve already received word from retailers that they feel this is the best way to set this test up.
Quesada also made it clear that he thinks retail will continue to be the dominant channel, with digital comics bringing new readers to brick-and-mortar stores—and bringing old ones back:
One would have to assume that because of the overwhelming popularity of the iPad Marvel App, there are people who have it who may never have ventured into a comic shop or perhaps lost interest in comics many years ago and are curious as to what’s been happening in our fantastic universe. The hope is that we capitalize on that and the high profile of Iron Man, get readers interested in this single story and from there, if they want to purchase more or purchase that issue, they are directed to comic shops.
So it sounds like this is a limited test, not a grand plan to start releasing all their content on digital at the same time it comes out in print, and that Marvel’s strategy instead is to use digital to boost traffic to retail stores.
- June 9, 2010 @ 05:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
The Middle Ground #7: You Could Wait For A Lifetime To Spend Your Days In The Sunshine
I blame my upbringing, personally.
I’m a child of Britpop, and so whenever I think about comics publishers other than Marvel or DC, I tend to think about independent music labels of the 1990s that put out the bands that I liked: Superior Quality (Never mind the Bluetones, I loved Mover. Which made one of me), Cooking Vinyl, Fierce Panda, Deceptive and the like. It’s an entirely different business, of course, but back in those days, the inherent snobbery of being young and into white-boys-with-guitars-pretending-it’s-the-1960s music meant that being indie was cool and not “selling out” and so you paid attention to record labels. The indie that everyone loved, of course was Creation Records, home to Oasis (Of course, but more importantly for me, the home to Teenage Fanclub and Primal Scream and Super Furry Animals).
Creation seemed, at one point, to be the ideal record label: Small enough to not be a Corporate Giant (Whatever that actually means), but fat enough with Oasis-related income to be able to support all these other bands and less-successful acts. It seemed like a surreal example of everything working: A band breaking through to a mainstream wider than than just music fans, and through their success, elevating the potential for success of those around them. I think about Oasis, and Creation, and I think, why can’t that happen for comics?
And then I remember that it already has.
Almost, if not all, of the breakout comics since, what, Sandman (?) have come from publishers who aren’t Marvel or DC: Bone, From Hell, Hellboy, Tank Girl (You scoff now, but back in the day, before the movie soured that particular wellspring), Fun Home, Persepolis, Scott Pilgrim… All of them have come from the comics’ equivalent of an indie label (And, as much from personal tastes and biases, as any cold hard facts, I’d argue that Oni Press is the Creation Records of the comic industry, which makes James Lucas Jones the Alan McGee, which is meant as more of a compliment than it may sound), which leads me to two thoughts:
Firstly: What happened to the Big Two? Post-Sandman, did the material go elsewhere (due to rights issues, maybe?), or did both Marvel and DC decide to focus on less mainstream-friendly work after a certain point?
Secondly: Why are all of these breakthrough books still considered, if not novelties, then rarities? Why don’t non-Big Two publishers have more standing and pull in the industry when they’re the ones putting out the books that new readers want to read?
The depressing answers are, of course, “The Big Two saw more money in concentrating on finetuning their superheroes” and “Because the comic industry en masse wants to read superheroes more than anything else,” but I’m choosing to remain positive and hope for some other explanation. Is it my imagination, after all, or have we finally found something worth reading comics for?
- June 8, 2010 @ 03:45 PM by Graeme McMillan
Troubled Spider-Man musical finds a new Mary Jane
Jennifer Damiano
Jennifer Damiano has been cast as Mary Jane Watson in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, ending a three-month search to replace Evan Rachel Wood in the delay-plagued Broadway musical.
Damiano, 19, was nominated for a 2009 Tony Award for best featured actress in a musical for her role in Next to Normal. She’s also appeared in an episode of Gossip Girl.
She’ll join 26-year-old newcomer Reeve Carney in a $52-million production directed by The Lion King‘s Julie Taymor and scored by U2′s Bono and the Edge. Spider-Man is finally set to open in November after months of delays led to the departures of Wood in March and Alan Cumming in April. There’s been no announcement as to who will replace Cumming as Green Goblin.
Spider-Man, possibly the most expensive musical in Broadway history, will cost about $1 million a week to produce — hundreds of thousands of dollars more than elaborate shows like Mary Poppins and West Side Story — and require the 1,700-seat Hilton Theatre in New York City to sell out for every show for four years just to break even.
- June 8, 2010 @ 01:24 PM by Kevin Melrose
Video of the Day | Erik Colan interviews his dad, Gene
Some good news — according to Clifford Meth, artist Gene Colan has recovered from his injuries, though he’s still living at a hospital/recovery facility in New York because “going home means his wife will have to leave.”
But he’s well enough to leave the facility, as you’ll see in the above video, where his son Erik takes him back to the area where he grew up and talks to him about his early life.
- June 8, 2010 @ 12:30 PM by JK Parkin
Everyone’s a Critic | A roundup of comic book reviews and thinkpieces
A panel from Simone Lia's Fluffy
Profile: Paul Gravett looks at the work of British cartoonist Simone Lia, whose comic Fluffy chronicles the relationship that grows between a man and a rabbit on a tour through Sicily. Gravett writes:
Lia spins together realistic emotional situations with fanciful, cartoonish playfulness, using diagrams of the thoughts cramming a character’s head, guest narrators like a cheery dust particle and a grouchy piece of dandruff, or “footage” of a little brain cell.
Theory: Shaun Huston discusses comics based on movie and television properties, and how they fit—or don’t fit—with the franchises they are based on:
For both writers and artists working on adaptations of movies and TV shows the challenge is to find a working space wherein one’s own sensibilities can be effectively meshed with the look and feel of the original text and into a book that works for readers. As [Douglas] Wolk implies, this may not be the highest or best expression of art and craft in comics, but doing it well is, in its own way, still an achievement, perhaps even more so because of the mixed reputation of such books.
Review: Kate Dacey writes a mixed review of the first volume of Library Wars: Love and War, a manga about “hot guys who hate censorship but like books, libraries, and butt-kicking women.”
Review: David Brothers has four reasons why he likes Heralds #1—and you should, too!
Advocacy: Ben Morse feels that Young Justice: Sins of Youth has been sadly underrated and unjustly overlooked, so he takes the opportunity to discuss just why it’s so great.
Review: Oliver Ho reads Taiyo Matsumoto’s GoGo Monster, a coming-of-age story that takes a walk on the weird side.
Review: I know that reviews of Daniel Clowes’s Wilson are a dime a dozen, but Michael Buntag’s review sums it all up nicely, so if you don’t have time to read them all, read his.
- June 8, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Straight for the art | Marvel/Third Eye blacklight posters
art by John Buscema
The illustrious Agent M directs us to this eye-melting gallery of blacklight posters based on Marvel Comics art from Third eye, Inc., assembled by cartoonist Nick Derington. In the comments for one image, Paul Pope reveals that DC’s Mark Chiarello has some of these in his office. But could even the most ardent pro-DC/anti-Marvel fan blame him? Look at these things!
- June 8, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by Sean T. Collins
Wetworks returns in September
Wetworks one-shot
Wildstorm announced yesterday on their blog that Wetworks will return in September as a one-shot called Wetworks: Mutations #1.
The book is co-written by Kevin Grevioux and Christopher Long, with art by Julius Gopez and a cover (above) by Brandon Badeaux. Grevioux wrote, produced and starred in the Underworld films, in addition to writing New Warriors and Legend of the Blue Marvel for Marvel Comics. Gopez, meanwhile, worked on the Dragonlance books from Devil’s Due.
Here’s the solicitation info:
Roaming the post-Apocalyptic American landscape, it’s Wetworks like you’ve never seen them before. With their symbiotes no longer reliably functioning, the team finds themselves running up against Lord Defile, intent upon remaking the ruined Earth in his own vision, which includes experimenting on human prisoners to create a hybrid species! Writer, actor and co-creator of the Underworld movie franchise Kevin Grevioux and co-writer Christopher Long bring their unique take to this classic WildStorm franchise, with incredibly detailed art by newcomer Julius Gopez.
And if I’m not mistaken, Wildstorm posted a teaser for the book in the form of a page of art back in February.
Wetworks was created by Whilce Portacio and was intended to be one of Image Comics’ launch titles back in the early 1990s, before Portacio had to withdraw from the company. It was eventually published by Image under the Wildstorm banner.
- June 8, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Softness
Scott Pilgrim Clip-ons
From the latest issue of Previews Plus, a supplemental catalog that Diamond puts out from retailers, come a couple of Scott Pilgrim-related items — just in time for the big movie, as they say.
Above are 4″ “plush clip-ons” of Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers, which you can attach to your backpack, belt loop, key chain or anywhere else you desire. After the jump are some 8″ plushes you may have already seen, as they’ve been making the rounds since Bryan Lee O’Malley tweeted about them last week. Per the catalog, they’re scheduled to ship in July and manufactured by Mezco Toys.
Now where are my Scott Pilgrim action figures?
- June 8, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by JK Parkin
Commissioned Pieces from HeroesCon
My head is still a jumbled mess from the massive amount of information, entertainment, panels and Evan Dorkin’s wit that I experienced at this year’s HeroesCon. You’ll see my con report in a few days, but in the meantime, here are some pieces I commissioned . Don’t ask me to pick a favorite, as I equally enjoy each of them for different reasons. My thanks to Dean Trippe, Chris Giarrusso, Roger Langridge and Tom Fowler for their great pieces.
Dean Trippe's Vision
- June 8, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Tim O'Shea
Manga publishers join forces to fight scanlation sites [Updated]
One Manga
A coalition of Japanese and U.S. manga publishers is threatening legal action against 30 scanlation sites, Publishers Weekly reports.
The group is composed of the Japanese Digital Comic Association, whose 36 members includes publishing giants Kodansha, Shogakukan and Shueisha, Square Enix, the Tuttle-Mori Agency and U.S. publishers Vertical Inc., Viz Media, Tokyopop and Yen Press.
According to PW, the publishers contend that although formerly fan-driven, scanlation — scanning, translating and posting manga, traditionally titles that are difficult to find outside of Japan — has become a profitable enterprise for high-traffic aggregation sites that host thousands of titles illegally. Google recently ranked scanlation aggregator One Manga among the world’s 1,000 most-visited websites. It draws 4.2 million unique visitors a month.
The group charges that in addition to attracting millions of visitors and reaping advertising revenue, some sites are soliciting donations and charging for memberships. In addition, iPhone apps are being developed “solely to link to and republish the content of scanlations sites.”
No lawsuits have been filed, and no websites named, but it seems likely that One Manga and Manga Fox will be among those targeted. A spokesperson said in a press release that the publishers group hopes “the offending sites will take it upon themselves to immediately cease their activities. Where this is not the case, however, we will seek injunctive relief and statutory damages. We will also report offending sites to federal authorities, including the anti-piracy units of the Justice Department, local law enforcement agencies and FBI.”
News of the effort comes a little more than a month after it was announced a coalition of U.S. comics publishers had worked with the FBI to shut down the piracy website HTMLComics.
- June 8, 2010 @ 09:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics artists talk shop
Jeph Jacques' Questionable Content
For those who are fascinated by the process of drawing comics—and for artists who are always on the prowl for that perfect tool—here are two serious art-nerd discussions.
In the digital corner is Jeph Jacques, who apparently gets the same question a lot: “Should I buy a Wacom tablet?” His answer is a qualified yes, but he recommends that beginners start with the cheapest one, and he discusses at length the ways that drawing on a tablet differs from drawing on paper. This is interesting reading even for non-artists.
Meanwhile, at Hope Larson’s site, Graham Johnson asks “What do you use to draw?” and gets a host of different answers, most of them concerning old-school tools like pencils, brushes, and Bristol board, although some folks use digital media for all or part of the process.
- June 8, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
DrunkDuck
Business | Platinum Studios has sold webcomics community DrunkDuck to e-book publisher WOWIO for an undisclosed sum. WOWIO was purchased in 2008 by Platinum and then sold in July 2009 to a holding company formed by Platinum President and COO Brian Altounian.
The DrunkDuck acquisition follows the announcement last week that WOWIO has raised $1.7 million in private financing and purchased WEvolt.com, an online community for creators to share and promote their work. Established in 2002 by Dylan Squires, DrunkDuck provides free hosting for webcomics, as well as forums and a feedback/review system. The site was purchased in December 2006 by Platinum. [press release]
- June 8, 2010 @ 07:38 AM by Kevin Melrose
Talking Comics with Tim: Molly Crabapple
"The Puppet Makers" character designs, by Molly Crabapple
Back in mid-May, Molly Crabapple and John Leavitt launched their latest project, Puppet Makers, at Zuda Comics. When Crabapple gave me the head-up about the project a few weeks back, I immediately recalled our enjoyable last interview (August 24, 2009), and decided to go for another round of questions. Here’s the official synopsis on the project: “Versailles 1685, France has industrialized centuries before her neighbors but focuses on creating exquisitely ornate robotic shells for the aristocracy called, DOLLIES. Towering, lavishly expensive, and run on electricity provided by damming the Seine. Only the court elite wears Dollies, but their upkeep is beginning to bankrupt France. During the king’s birthday party, his Dolly explodes but is found to be empty. Rumors fly, blaming THE SMASHERS, a ring of Luddite terrorists who may lurk within the palace. The church’s cardinal sends a neophyte priest, JEAN JAQUES, to uncover Smashers at court. Amidst the contrary, conniving and self-indulgent upper class, Jean is thwarted at every turn. As he begins to uncover the truth behind the king’s disappearance, he finds that decadence and deceit may be a greater threat to the throne of France and his own life than her missing monarch.”
Tim O’Shea: What is the core appeal of steampunk fiction for you as a creator?
Molly Crabapple: I started drawing steampunk pictures in college. A teacher assigned me to design a skateboard deck, and, rebellious thing that I was, I thought it would be hilarious to imagine kateboarding as the sport of trussed Victorian ladies. I drew a board titled “Lady Etheldrina’s Wheeled Conveyance”, which shows a bouffant haired aristocrat on a skateboard, which is then being hauled by her maid.
- June 7, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Tim O'Shea