2010 June
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Mark Fiore's NewsToons
Digital comics | Michael Cavna reports that Apple CEO Steve Jobs essentially accused cartoonist Mark Fiore of lying about the rejection of his iPhone app, telling attendees at a tech conference the Pulitzer Prize winner “never resubmitted” NewsToons after the company’s initial brush-off. “We’re doing the best we can, we’re fixing mistakes,” Jobs is quoted as saying. “But what happens is — people lie. And then they run to the press and tell people about this oppression, and they get their 15 minutes of fame. We don’t run to the press and say ‘this guy is a son of a bitch liar!’ — we don’t do that.”
Fiore seems baffled, telling Cavna: “My NewsToons app was, in fact, rejected. … The reason I never resubmitted the app was because I wasn’t about to make the changes Apple sought and remove any ‘content that ridicules public figures.’ Ridiculing public figures is what I do and is an essential part of journalism.” Tom Spurgeon offers some commentary, pointing out how strange Jobs’ accusations are. [Comic Riffs]
Legal | The Democratic Party of Japan, which holds 54 of the 127 seats in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, and several smaller groups are threatening on June 14 to vote down a bill to tighten restrictions on the sexual depictions of minors in comics, animation and video games. Gov. Shintaro Ishihara said Tokyo could come up with a new bill if the current one is defeated. [The Japan Times]
- June 3, 2010 @ 07:49 AM by Kevin Melrose
Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs | The Killer
The Killer, Volume 1
The Killer, Volume 1
Written by Matz; Illustrated by Luc Jacamon
Archaia; $19.95
As single issues, The Killer was a gorgeous, entrancing reading experience. Or rather, I imagine that it was. That was my experience with the two or three issues I bought before deciding to wait for the collection. The trouble was a sporadic publishing schedule and a story that didn’t really encourage a serialized approach. Issues were intimately connected with each other and there wasn’t much in the way of recapping from issue to issue. It was obvious that this was going to read much better in larger chunks. And so it does.
The title character is a nameless assassin-for-hire who operates out of Paris. As the story opens he’s holed up in a hotel across the street from the home of his next target’s girlfriend. The problem is: his target hasn’t shown up for nine days and the Killer’s getting restless. As he continues to wait, he recalls past kills and how he got into this business. Through his narration he reveals an honest, non-hypocritical attitude about his life. He knows what he’s doing isn’t nice and he doesn’t apologize for it, but he thinks you’re the two-faced one if you condemn him for it.
Justification, complications, and James Bond after the break.
- June 2, 2010 @ 03:00 PM by Michael May
Send Us Your Shelf Porn!
This week Shelf Porn and our ongoing “Robot Sixth Gun” features collide, as The Sixth Gun writer Cullen Bunn shares his inner sanctum with us. If you’d like to show off your shelves here, drop me an email and we’ll make it happen.
Now let’s hear from Cullen …
- June 2, 2010 @ 02:30 PM by JK Parkin
Straight for the “ugh” | Vintage anti-Irish cartoons
"The Irish Frankenstein" by Matt Morgan
As part of a series of posts on the racial attitudes that drove the United States into the Civil War, blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates has posted a small but powerful gallery of 19th-century anti-Irish cartoons and illustrations. As gorgeously drawn — by the all-time-great political cartoonist Thomas Nast in some cases — as they are jaw-droppingly benighted, they’re posted by Coates to demonstrate the ease with which today’s interested readers can access primary documents rather than relying on the potentially biased work of interpreters. Another silver lining: Given the total assimilation of Irish Americans, they’re proof that even the most stridently held prejudices can fall before their twin opponents truth and time.
- June 2, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
BOOM!’s Too Much Coffee Man mug commercial
BOOM! Studios has put together a promo video for the Two Much Coffee Man animated mug that they’re releasing under their BOOM! Town imprint, featuring some of the talent around their office.
- June 2, 2010 @ 01:48 PM by JK Parkin
Straight for the art | Roger Langridge draws Doctor Who
Planet Bollywood
This is what you might see if you are lucky enough to sit next to Roger Langridge on his flight to the States tomorrow to attend Heroes Con; he’s working on a ten-page story for Doctor Who magazine and figures he will be finishing it on the road. In the meantime, he shows off the pencils for one page on his blog. The story is called Planet Bollywood, which, as Roger says, just about says it all. If you’re heading to Heroes Con, go visit Roger at table 518, near the Boom! Studios booth, and see how it’s going.
- June 2, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Straight for the art | The Lorelai, Rory and Luke comic that should have been
Faux Gilmore Girls cover
Under the heading “Our Buffy,” Drawn and Quarterly posts a cover by Dan Zettwoch for an unfortunately not real Gilmore Girls comic –”That is, unless you demand it!!” Tom Devlin writes. If anything can get my mom reading comics, it might be this …
- June 2, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by JK Parkin
Thin wallets, fat bookshelves | A roundup of publishing news and notes
Impossible Incorporated
Teaser | J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Cavallaro, who worked together on The Life and Times of Savior 28, have a new project called Impossible Incorporated in the works.
Graphic novels | Rick Veitch, Ramona Fradon, Michael Netzer and Terry Beatty are providing art for The Adventures of the Unemployed Man by Gan Golan and Erich Origen (Goodnight Bush). “Here they’ve written a retro romp that interprets the current global financial imbroglio into classic deadpan superhero shtick,” Veitch writes on his blog. “The writing is quite well done and had me laughing out loud when I first read the script.” The book is due out this fall from Little, Brown and Company.
Prose | Robert Kirkman will have a short story in the upcoming zombie-themed Living Dead 2 from Night Shade Books.
History | DC Comics is working with TASCHEN Books on “an ultra-comprehensive, extra large book so impressive, even super heroes may have trouble lifting it,” according to DC’s The Source blog. 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking will feature more than 1,500 images and essays on the company written by former DC Comics Publisher Paul Levitz.
Comic books | Blackline Comics will publish Assassin & Son: Path of Vengeance, a comic written by the WWE’s Shad Gaspard and Mark Copani. Gaspard used to be part of the tag team Cryme Tyme, while Copani wrestled under the name Muhammad Hassan a few years back and was part of quite the controversy on Smackdown.
Adaptations | Pre-order the upcoming Xbox 360 game Singularity from Amazon, and you’ll receive the Singularity graphic novel, which features the work of Tom Mandrake, among others.
- June 2, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
Is the DC Universe taking back Swamp Thing, other Vertigo characters?
Swamp Thing #128
A rumor snaking its way through the blogosphere has Swamp Thing leading a migration of characters from Vertigo back to the DC Universe, ending for some properties nearly two decades of imprint isolation.
In a brief post on Tuesday, Rich Johnston reported that new DC Comics Co-Publisher Dan DiDio “decreed” a new Swamp Thing title be released under the DC bullet, where it last appeared in February 1993. (That decision apparently meant the cancellation of a reboot in the works from acclaimed science fiction author China Miéville.) What’s more, Johnston contends a “new policy” would permit any character that originated in the DC Universe to again be used by that imprint.
None of that has been confirmed, but if it’s true it certainly signals a significant shift in editorial policy at the recently restructured DC Comics. With few exceptions, once a property moved from the publisher’s superhero line to its “mature readers” imprint, it typically remained. That’s not to say it never happened: In recent years, Animal Man and Doom Patrol were reclaimed by the DCU, and Zatanna and The Phantom Stranger have little difficulty traveling between the two imprints, even if their visits to Vertigo are only for the occasional cameo or one-shot.
However, when was the last time John Constantine, Swamp Thing or the Sandman cast popped up in a superhero title? (Probably 1997, in JLA, for the latter; Neil Gaiman has final say on their use. For the other two, I have no idea.)
- June 2, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
Start Reading Now (but only if you’re over 18): Filthy Figments
Bound, by Gina Biggs, one of the launch titles at Filthy Figments
Gina Biggs is the creator of the super-girly romance webcomic Red String, so it’s not surprising that when she turns her hand to porn, she tags her site “The Sweet Spot for Smut.” Biggs is teaming up with Jennie Breeden (The Devil’s Panties), Robin Edwards (Cardboard Angel), Amy Stoddard (Patches), Kittyhawk (Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki) and Megan Gedris (I Was Abducted by Lesbian Pirates from Outerspace) to launch Filthy Figments, a subscription-only adult webcomics site. For $4.99 a month (discreetly recorded on your credit card statement with the verbal equivalent of a plain brown wrapper), subscribers get access to 100 pages of all types of adult comics, plus about 30 pages a month in new material, doled out in weekly updates.
Biggs, Edwards, and Stoddard are all members of the Strawberry Comics collective, which focuses on teen-friendly shoujo manga comics, so it does seem a little strange to see the sample of Biggs in adult mode. Strange… but sort of nice. Gedris is the edgiest one of the bunch, and it will be fun to see what she comes up with. The collective caters to a variety of tastes, but the fact that they describe them as hetero, yaoi, and yuri suggests that a manga sensibility will prevail.
(Found via Comics Worth Reading. I talked to Gina about her tamer work at Robot 6 last year.)
- June 2, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Straight for the art | The art of wounded pro-Palestinian activist Emily Henochowicz
Sheikh Jarrah Swings by Emily Henochowicz
The pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement activist group reports and the Baltimore Sun confirms that 21-year-old Jewish-American art student Emily Henochowicz was badly wounded Monday during a Jerusalem protest against Israel’s deadly raid on a relief flotilla headed for Gaza over the weekend. Hit directly in the face by a tear-gas canister fired by an Israeli border policeman, Henochowicz lost her left eye and required substantial surgery to repair damage to the bones of her face and skull.
What makes the nature of her injuries sadder still, hopefully regardless of your thoughts on the underlying conflict, is that Henochowicz is clearly a talented visual artist and animator. You can visit her blog and Flickr page for everything from life-drawing sketches to visual chronicles of her experiences in Israel and the Occupied Territories.
Via Andrew Sullivan, who has further information and links.
- June 2, 2010 @ 09:30 AM by Sean T. Collins
Straight for the art | BP anti-fanart
The upside of the oil spill
Enraged by the ongoing crisis in the gulf, and BP’s response (or lack thereof), artists have taken matters into their own hands and made … comics. io9 has a small gallery, featuring Aquaman, Spongebob, and the comics stylings of Kate Beaton.
- June 2, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
In the kitchen with Chris Onstad and a bucket of balls
Achewood in the kitchen
Patrick Alan Coleman, of the Portland Mercury, pens one of the oddest cooking/cartooning articles ever when he records his conversations with Achewood creator Chris Onstad as they cook up a big batch of buffalo and yak testicles. Onstad’s characters talk about food a lot, so the strip has apparently attracted a following among the culinary-minded:
“What basically happened was that people who like cooking actually started following the strip.” Onstad says. “I came to Portland in 2008 to do a signing and cooks were coming in with these strips that had obviously been hung up next to their stations because they smelled like fryolator grease and were discolored.”
Furthermore, Onstad has self-published one Achewood cookbook already and is working on a second; the article includes several of his recipes. While Coleman’s enthusiastic descriptions of testicle prep may be wince-inducing for male readers, the article is an entertaining look at the creator and his quirks, and well worth a read. (Via ComixTalk.)
- June 2, 2010 @ 08:30 AM by Brigid Alverson
HeroesCon 2010 | Defective Comics
Promo art for the Defective Comics panel
Heading to Heroes Con? This sounds like a good time: Ben Towle and Craig Fischer will be doing a mega-panel titled “Defective Comics” — “a lovingly critical look at just how bizarre the superhero genre can be.” Details:
The event will include a presentation by Towle on the sad-sack super-man in Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library; a panel discussion with Colleen Coover, Evan Dorkin, Jeff Parker and Chris Pitzer; a talk by Crogan Adventures creator Chris Schweizer about art-comix creators crossing over into mainstream superhero comics; and clips from some of the weirdest and worst superhero films of all time. Excelsior?
- June 2, 2010 @ 08:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Miller describes Xerxes as ‘a sweeping tale with gods and warriors’
"Xerxes" lithograph, by Frank Miller
Frank Miller promises the long-discussed prequel Xerxes will tell “a more complex story” than 300, his 1998 miniseries about the Battle of Thermopylae that became a 2007 box-office hit.
Officially confirmed on Tuesday by Dark Horse, the six-issue miniseries will likely debut in 2011. The publisher will release a Xerxes lithograph in October.
As Miller first revealed in December, Xerxes will take place 10 years before Thermopylae, beginning with the legendary Battle of Marathon, which marked the end of Persia’s first invasion of Greece.
“The story will be the same heft as 300 but it cover a much, much greater span of time — it’s 10 years, not three days,” Miller told the Los Angeles Times this week. ”This is a more complex story. The story is so much larger. The Spartans in 300 were being enclosed by the page as the world got smaller. This story has truly vast subjects. The Athenian naval fleet, for instance, is a massive artistic undertaking and it dwarfed by the Persian fleet, which is also shown in this story. The story has elements of espionage, too, and it’s a sweeping tale with gods and warriors.”
He said that while Xerxes is the title character, the protagonist is Themistocles, the famed Athenian politician and general.
- June 2, 2010 @ 06:49 AM by Kevin Melrose