2010 July
Judge rules Dark Ages Spawn, Domina and Tiffany are derivative characters
Spawn: The Dark Ages #1
A federal judge has dealt another blow to Todd McFarlane in his long-running copyright dispute with Neil Gaiman, ruling that the characters Dark Ages Spawn, Domina and Tiffany are mere derivatives of their earlier creations.
In a decision filed Friday, U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb declared that the three characters are simply variations of Medieval Spawn and Angela, co-created by Gaiman in 1993 for McFarlane’s Spawn series. Therefore, McFarlane has until Sept. 1 to provide Gaiman with an accounting of money earned from Dark Ages Spawn, Domina and Tiffany. As co-owner of the copyrights, Gaiman is entitled to one-half of the profits.
McFarlane’s attorneys had argued the three characters were based on the Spawn universe, and not on earlier creations. Gaiman, and ultimately the judge, disagreed.
The case, which began last month in Madison, Wisconsin, is rooted in the prolonged legal battle between Gaiman and McFarlane over ownership of Medieval Spawn, Angela and Count Nicholas Cogliostro. A federal jury found in 2002 that Gaiman has a copyright interest in the creations. However, in 2004 Todd McFarlane Productions filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following the $15-million judgment in the Tony Twist case, leaving Gaiman unpaid. With TMP now emerging from bankruptcy, Gaiman petitioned for a ruling on the “knock-offs,” and an accounting of what he’s owed by McFarlane.
Crabb’s decision is interesting for a few reasons, not the least of which is the role continuity and story logic plays in her findings.
- July 31, 2010 @ 08:58 AM by Kevin Melrose
Take a look at color pages from Paul Pope’s Battling Boy
From Paul Pope's "Battling Boy"
Artist Paul Pope and colorist Nathan Schreiber have released what I think is our first look at color pages from Battling Boy, Pope’s highly anticipated — and much-delayed — graphic novel from First Second Books.
Announced in 2007, Battling Boy centers on the son of a god (or perhaps superhero) who’s sent down from the top of a mountain by his father to rid the continent-sized city of Monstropolis of the monsters that plague it. This is the fabled comic with “horrible, Grimm’s fairytale, Beowulf-ish monsters” and 50-page fight scenes.
It was suggested back in March that Battling Boy initially could be serialized online, presumably as part of First Second’s TBC/To Be Continued initiative. However, no additional information has been released.
- July 30, 2010 @ 03:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Comics College: Eddie Campbell
Fate of the Artist
Comics College is a monthly feature where we provide an introductory guide to some of the comics medium’s most important auteurs and offer our best educated suggestions on how to become familiar with their body of work.
Welcome to this month’s edition of Comics College. Today we’ll be looking at the body of work of one of the medium’s most unique creators, Eddie Campbell.
- July 30, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Webcomics: Still getting no respect
Back in 2007 there was the great Wikipedia webcomics purge. Now there’s this: Dave McElfatrick, one of the four creators of Cyanide & Happiness, has been denied an O-1 visa into the U.S. McElfatrick, who lives in Ireland, wants to cross the pond and work with his collaborators in person, so a regular tourist visa won’t do. The O-1 visa is reserved for “aliens of extraordinary ability” in their fields, but apparently 374,325 hits a day isn’t extraordinary enough. (Who makes these decisions, anyway? The LOLCats?) Naturally, Dave isn’t taking this sitting down; he has started an internet petition to demonstrate to the folks at Immigration that he has a worldwide following. With upstanding folks like Harry Pothead, Juan Valdez, and Zakorath, The Soulless One advocating for Dave, it’s hard to imagine that the folks at the State Department won’t see the light… right?
- July 30, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Mark Millar’s brother to jump out of a plane dressed as Nemesis for charity
Nemesis #2
Earlier this year Mark Millar and Dynamic Forces held a couple of auctions to raise money for a new mini-bus for the special needs kids Millar’s brother, Bobby, works with in Scotland. The bus costs about £26,000, or about $40,000, and according to Mark, they raised about half that with the auctions.
Mark said he is planning another auction around his upcoming Superior comic, but he’s also asking folks to sponsor his brother’s first attempt at skydiving. In August, Bobby will dress up as Nemesis, the character created by his brother and artist Steve McNiven, and jump out of a plane. “My only fear, of course, is that with that white hood and cut out eye-holes (I’ve seen the suit) he’s going to be mistaken for the first Scottish Ku Klux Klansman and get the crap kicked out of him!” Mark said.
Mark posted a message from his brother on the Millarworld forums:
“My sky dive, in aid of the purchase of a school minibus for disabled pupils at my school, takes place on Sunday 22nd of August in Perth, Scotland. We’re looking to raise about £26,000 (approx $40,000) and are just over half way there. Ideally we’d like to purchase the bus for October and I’m now looking for people prepared to sponsor me to participate in my first (and last!) sky dive event. All contributions would be most welcome and will help to bring us that bit closer to our target sum. https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=BFABE56N5S8PG Best wishes, Dr Bobby Millar”
- July 30, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
Comixology to release four-issue Carnivale De Robotique miniseries
Carnivale De Robotique
Comixology is releasing Carnivale De Robotique by Tony Trov, Johnny Zito and Mark Fidona on their digital application for the iPad, iPhone and the web. Originally a one-shot released during Indy Comic Book Week last December, the story has been expanded to a four-issue series.
Carnivale De Robotique is the story of a rebellious Nanny Droid, Wendy, who runs away to be a ballerina in the robot circus. She ends up in a bit of a love triangle with a clown and the artificial strong man.
“Carnivale De Robotique is a three ringed love triangle that explodes into a universal adventure under the big top. We originally put the one-shot together for Indy Skip Week,” Zito posted on his site. “The characters are so fun that we decided to expand into four issues. It’s about life and love and all the silly junk you have to get over to enjoy it.”
The first issue is available for free right now, and the rest of the series will be available monthly for $.99 each.
- July 30, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
Weekend watching: Gene Luen Yang talks about his life in comics
Gene Luen Yang: Keynote – Breaking into Graphic Novels & Comic Books Conference from hclib on Vimeo.
Gene Luen Yang, who just picked up an Eisner for his short story “Urgent Request” in The Eternal Smile, discusses his evolution from geek to comics geek to comics creator to successful comics creator in this video of a talk sponsored by the Hennepin County Library and the Loft Literary Center. I saw Yang give the same talk at the American Library Association meeting last month, and I can highly recommend it—he’s personable and entertaining, and he has a lot to say. The video is almost an hour long, but the time will fly by.
(Found via the Forbidden Planet blog.)
- July 30, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Quote of the day | Steve Murray, on the Hall H stabbing
“This was the result of a seating dispute because, as we all know, nerds enjoy sitting. Now a lot of people look at an incident like this as a strictly isolated event, not as a sign of things to come. I mean, for a show that pulls in more than 100,000 people, one eye-stabbing is pretty good. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I’m pretty sure the last Republican National Convention had at least 40 eye stabbings. But what makes the Comic-Con stabbing different is that one expects Republicans to attack each other’s faces with knives. With nerds, however, the violence is usually a top-down scenario with bullies and jocks doling out the noogies and the eye stabs.”
– journalist/cartoonist Steve Murray (aka Chip Zdarsky), on the “instance of nerd-on-nerd violence”
at Comic-Con International
- July 30, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Scott Pilgrim, Blackest Night dominate New York Times lists
Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 6
The New York Times spotlights the debut of author Janet Evanovich’s first graphic novel Troublemaker (with daughter Alex and artist Joelle Jones) atop its graphic books bestseller list. The title’s performance probably should be expected, though, considering the popularity of her Stephanie Plum novels.
What I find more interesting is the domination of the hardcover and paperback charts by two series: DC Comics’ Black Night collections, and the entire run of Oni Press’ Scott Pilgrim.
Buoyed by the release last week of the final volume of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s acclaimed series, and anticipation for the Aug. 13 debut of Edgar Wright’s film adaptation, the Scott Pilgrim books claimed the top six spots on the paperback list, with Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour debuting at No. 1. (As we reported earlier this week, the initial 100,000-copy printing of the sixth volume sold out at the distributor level within a few days of its release.)
Meanwhile, on the hardcover list, five Blackest Night collections fell into place behind Troublemaker: Blackest Night: Black Lantern Corps, Vols. 1 and 2; Blackest Night; Blackest Night: Green Lantern; and Blackest Night: Green Lantern Corps.
- July 30, 2010 @ 08:19 AM by Kevin Melrose
Grumpy Old Fan | Being good at being bad
Secret Society of Super-Villains #10
The cover of October 1977′s Secret Society of Super-Villains cries
Who gave the secret order to kill Captain Comet?
Was it Star Sapphire? The Wizard? Gorilla Grodd?
– Or someone else?
We who know the fate of SSoSV might nod knowingly at the surely-unintentional connection between that breathless blurb and the “publishorial” at the end of the issue.
First, though, some history.
- July 29, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by Tom Bondurant
Yang, Grampá discuss Strange Tales II
Frog Man by Gene Yang
With the announcement in San Diego that Strange Tales II is definitely on the way from Marvel, some of the creators are starting to talk about their contributions. Over on his blog, Eisner winner Gene Luen Yang says he’ll be working on a Frog Man story.
- July 29, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by JK Parkin
Something to look forward to: Nola’s Worlds
A page of MiniKim's art from Nola's Worlds
Most adult comics readers probably have never heard of Lerner’s Graphic Universe imprint; Lerner produces children’s books for the library trade, and when we were kids, their output was fairly stodgy. But no more! Their Graphic Universe line, launched in 2006, includes some stunningly good reads: Colleen AF Venable and Stephanie Yue’s Hamster and Cheese: Private Eye stories, which is laugh-out-loud funny even for adults, and the French series The Elsewhere Chronicles, a fantasy adventure that is literary in a First Second sort of way, if you know what I mean. (And they get bonus points from me for hiring the very talented Tintin Pantoja to illustrate their Manga Math Mysteries.)
Their most interesting upcoming series is the French fantasy trilogy Nola’s Worlds (original title: Alta Donna), which meshes manga-influenced art (as popular in France as over here) with the more traditional French color comic style. Editorial assistant Erin Finnegan interviewed the artist, MiniKim, at the GU blog, and they have also launched an art blog to show off the work in progress. Pop (Mélanie Buffière) is the colorist.The finished books will all come out this fall, and from the look of it, they will be a worthwhile read for adults as well as for kids.
- July 29, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Law & Order: Special Artists Unit
Kate Beaton does SVU: A Missing Boy Is Found
There’s just one more day to enjoy These Are Their Stories, an exhibit of art based on the TV show Law & Order, at Gallery Meltdown (inside Meltdown Comics) in Los Angeles, but hopefully the art will continue to live on on the internet. The contributing artists, including Kate Beaton, Box Brown, David Malki, and Chip Zdarsky, each drew a work of art based on a capsule description of a Law & Order episode. Some of the pieces, such as Nate Carle’s Ring Identifies Attacker, are whimsical, while others, like Michael Kupperman’s A Young Woman Escapes a Polygamist Cult, draw more directly on the show and its familiar characters. The exhibit is the work of Brandon Bird, who has a strange fascination with America’s favorite cop/court show; he has a whole gallery of Law & Order-inspired work online, including a Law & Order coloring book and SVU valentines.
- July 29, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Tom Brevoort on Marvel’s latest ‘tie-ins for variant’ swap
It’s a classic case of “sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.” Marvel made waves earlier this year with a swap offer in which they’d send retailers a rare Deadpool variant of Siege #3 for every 50 stripped covers of DC’s “ring books” — Blackest Night tie-ins retailers had to order in bulk to qualify for promotional plastic power rings for the various Lantern corps — they received in return.
Then earlier this month, Marvel flipped the script, offering a rare Deadpool variant of the upcoming Wolverine #1 relaunch in exchange for every 50 covers they receive from Marvel event tie-ins, specifically books from the X-Men: Second Coming and Siege events.
How’s that working out? Let’s find out, courtesy of the Twitter account of Vice President-Executive Editor Tom Brevoort:
An update on our current Marvel book-swap. With one week to go till cut-off, we’ve gotten less than 15% as many books as we did ring-books. In other words, for every 3 Marvel books returned, we’d previously gotten 20 ring-books. Could be that people wanted the SIEGE variant more.
… or, as one could infer, it could be that the Siege and Second Coming tie-ins eligible for this trade genuinely sold through to readers better than the Blackest Night tie-in “ring books” did, so retailers have fewer unwanted leftovers to unload. But far be it for Tom Brevoort to tweak the competition!
- July 29, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
Frank Miller’s Holy Terror to be released ‘next year, certainly’
Frank Miller on the set of "300"
More than three months after confirming that his long-discussed Holy Terror graphic novel no longer involves Batman fighting Al Qaeda, Frank Miller has revealed who’s taking the Dark Knight’s place.
“The character is called The Fixer and he’s very much an adventurer who’s been essentially searching for a mission,” he tells Hero Complex. “He’s been trained as special ops and when his city is attacked all of a sudden all the pieces fall into place and all this training comes into play. He’s been out there fighting crime without really having his heart in it — he does it to keep in shape. He’s very different than Batman in that he’s not a tortured soul. He’s a much more well-adjusted creature even though he happens to shoot 100 people in the course of the story.”
Miller says that Holy Terror, which was announced in 2006 (as a Batman project from DC Comics), will be released “next year, certainly,” although he hasn’t signed a publisher. He also addresses the leeriness of DC Comics executives, and his reasons for replacing the Caped Crusader with the new character.
“I pushed Batman as far as he can go and after a while he stops being Batman,” he says. “My guy carries a couple of guns and is up against an existential threat. He’s not just up against a goofy villain. Ignoring an enemy that’s committed to our annihilation is kind of silly. It just seems that chasing the Riddler around seems silly compared to what’s going on out there. I’ve taken Batman as far as he can go.”
- July 29, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Kevin Melrose