2010 July
Decision on Comic-Con’s future delayed until after this year’s event
Comic-Con
Although organizers had hoped to make an announcement about the future of Comic-Con International before this year’s event kicks off on Thursday, they now say a decision won’t be made until after this week’s convention is over.
Three cities — Anaheim, Los Angeles and San Diego — are embroiled in a bidding war for the event, whose contract with the San Diego Convention Center expires in 2012. At stake is the $163 million that Comic-Con’s 125,000 attendees pour into the local economy each year.
A decision by the Comic-Con board of directors has been expected since at least April. However, efforts by the three competing cities to sweeten their offers have contributed to repeated delays. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports the current hold-up stems from a request made in May by convention organizers for San Diego hotels to sign contracts guaranteeing room rates for the next five years.
“I don’t think all the hotels have signed contracts yet,” spokesman David Glanzer tells the newspaper, “and the truth of the matter is, because the situation won’t be resolved this week from our end, I think this is being tabled right now. We’re already spread thin right now. Ninety-nine percent of our time is ensuring the show is successful.”
The delay is worrisome enough that Mayor Jerry Sanders last week began calling hotel managers to urge them to finish the contracts.
- July 18, 2010 @ 08:36 AM by Kevin Melrose
SDCC Wishlist | Bill & Opus vs. Comic-Con
Bloom County T-shirt
IDW’s chief creative officer Chris Ryall reveals the artwork for the exclusive Bloom County shirt they’ll sell at their booth this year. The strip’s creator, Berkeley Breathed, will be at their booth during the con to sign it.
IDW will have lots of other con exclusives this year, including a remarqued edition of The Complete Bloom County Library Volume One and copies of True Blood #1 with a foil wrap around cover. You can see all the stuff they’re bringing to the show here.
- July 17, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by JK Parkin
SDCC Wishlist | Supernatural Law: The Gods Must Be Litigious
Exhibit A Press will have a new limited-edition Supernatural Law book at Comic-Con, The Gods Must Be Litigious:
The Gods Must Be Litigious
When the Medusa decides to write a book—watch out! The Gorgon of Greek mythology, whose glance can turn people to stone, has been creating controversy on Earth as a bestselling author. Her highly opinionated How to Talk to a Mortal (If You Must) has brought her speaking engagements, TV talk show appearances—and lots of enemies! One of her most outspoken critics is editorial cartoonist Red Thrall, who is unrelenting in his cartoon attacks. Will the Medusa reach her breaking point and turn him to stone? How long
will Zeus tolerate all this nonsense on Earth? Looks like Medusa’s going to need some lawyers! And those lawyers are of course Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre.
The book sells for $8.95 and will be available at the Exhibit A Press booth, #1909. Cartoonist Batton Lash will be on hand to sign copies.
If you aren’t going to the con, the Supernatural Law webcomic continues at www.supernaturallaw.com.
- July 17, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by JK Parkin
SDCC Wishlist | Science fiction and … shrunken heads?
The Franchise
Anthony Garcia of TwentyToSix Books sends word that they will debut their new trade paperback for The Franchise at the San Diego Comic-Con next week. Written by Garcia with art by Jim Jimenez and Reno Maniquis, it collects the first six issues of Wall of Angels. “Action, adventure, science fiction and myth all come together as the story follows a group of unlikely companions striving to keep a madman from attaining the secret of eternal life,” Garcia said.
They’ll be at table B06, “waaay in the northwest corner of the exhibit hall,” he said. And they’ll be sharing space with Shrunken Studios, “your source for fine quality shrunken heads.”
“Our Shrunken Heads were a big hit at this year’s Phoenix Comic Con,” he said. “No two are alike and they compliment any decor! Get yours now!”
You can check out what they look like after the jump.
- July 17, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
Project: Rooftop Invitational redesigns the Justice League
Project: Rooftop is hosting their first “invitational,” where they’ve asked various artists to redesign the members of the Justice League for a “jam” piece they’ll unveil over the coming weeks.
“I obviously love superheroes and superhero teams in general, but there’s something special about the JLA,” wrote the site’s co-founder, Dean Trippe. “The League roster is typically anchored by Superman and Batman, the first two superheroes, known as the World’s Finest for a reason, and Wonder Woman, the most iconic and recognizable superheroine of all time. Collectively now referred to as DC’s Trinity, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman merge the science fiction, crime-fighting, and mythological elements common to superhero origins into the foundation of a very strange universe, made accessible to all three through their mutual friendship.”
The first member to get the redesign treatment is Wonder Woman, by artist Paul Maybury:
- July 17, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
SDCC ’10 | Freakshow to debut at SDCC, at long last
Joe Suitor's cover for Freakshow #1
The Ape Entertainment folks announced this week that they will have special issues of Freakshow #1 available for purchase at their booth at SDCC, and creators David Server and Jackson Lanzing will be participating in panel on Thursday at 1 p.m. With art by Joe Suitor (Spider-Man: Fear Itself, GI Joe: Helix) and a postapocalyptic premise that is interesting if not entirely novel, it looks like it might have promise.
It certainly is a slow gestation, though. If their production blog is to be trusted, they were hyping the comic at SDCC in 2008 (planning a 2009 release) and 2009. The series is currently scheduled for “early 2011,” and there has been a pre-con flurry of activity at the Freakshow production blog and Facebook, so perhaps this will be the year…
Full press release after the cut.
- July 17, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Chain Reactions | Superman #701
Superman #701
For the second time in a month, a good deal of online discussion centered on “Grounded” the new Superman storyline J. Michael Straczynski and Eddy Barrows. That means the creators must be doing something right, yeah? That depends upon whom you ask.
While last month’s Superman #700 laid the groundwork, this week’s Issue 701 actually kicked off the Man of Steel’s cross-country tour in Philadelphia, the “City of Neighborhoods.” Unfortunately, one of those neighborhoods isn’t the “South Side.” (DC Comics will take its lumps from locals over the error. “We really love to hear that because it means people are reading it and there’s a sense of area pride,” Co-Publisher Dan DiDio told The Associated Press. “If we stand corrected, that’s OK.”)
But geographical gaffs aside, how does Superman #701 hold up? Here’s just a sampling of opinions:
The A.V. Club: “Straczynski is an interesting writer, and he’s clearly going for something here with this ground-level, back-to-basics storyline. But his characterization of Superman as a flinty, easily annoyed bully makes it seem like he’s trying to provide fodder for the folks at Superdickery.”
Brian Cronin, Comics Should Be Good: “‘Grounded’ is so patently EARNEST that it really does make up for a lot of the silliness that comes from Superman ‘zinging’ people with lines from Thoreau while he continues his walk across America getting in touch with the people. Perhaps the comic would be better, though, if Superman had a sidekick that followed him around and just shouted, ‘You just got SERVED!’ whenever Superman ‘zings’ people.”
- July 17, 2010 @ 08:51 AM by Kevin Melrose
The Fifth Color | Less Dare, More Devil
It must be a little disheartening to be a roadie for a magician. Don’t get me wrong, magic is really cool and even better when you see it live. No one goes into a magic show and thinks, “Oh this is all real, and this man has some sort of sorcery!” No, we go in knowing we’re going to be fooled, and are delighted or disappointed by the results depending on how good the performer is.
But if you were a roadie traveling around the country with this elaborate and really good magic show, I could see how it’d take a little something from you in the process. Every night when the magician would go to perform, you’d set up his mirrors, hide his playing cards, even simply stand on the other side of the curtain, and night after night, you’d have the show ruined for you. You never doubted this was fake, but there’s only so many times one can be reminded of that so boldly before a sort of resentment would build up. This performer is lying to people every show and they buy it because they’ve never seen it. And while they’ve all convinced themselves this is new and exciting, you’ve seen it all before.
I stopped reading Daredevil awhile ago. I quit lugging around Matt Murdock’s failing law office, setting up his girlfriend for disappointment, and standing in the wings while he got pushed to the edges of morality only to yo-yo back into place to do it all again in so many months. Another new writer would take the stage, and comic buyers would eat it up while I swear I’ve read this story before.
WARNING: We’ll be talking Shadowland #1 and Daredevil #508 this week, so grab your copies and read along!
Continue Reading »
- July 16, 2010 @ 03:30 PM by Carla Hoffman
Process: The making of Troublemaker
You can watch this page being made
One of the graphic novels I’m most looking forward to this month is Troublemaker, written by mystery writer Janet Evanovich (creator of the Stephanie Plum series) and her daughter Alex, and illustrated by Joelle Jones (Token, Spell Checkers). It was supposed to be out last week but is now looking like a July 20 release.
In the meantime, Dark Horse has a nice promotional piece up on their site, The Making of a Comic, that shows the different steps in the creation of the graphic novel: script, thumbnails, pencils, inks, coloring, and lettering for six different pages. It’s formatted nicely in such a way that you can look at the scripts from page to page or move through all the steps for a single page. My one complaint is that the Flash-based reader loads a bit slow on my computer—at first I thought some of the pages were blank—but that quibble aside, it’s well worth a look.
- July 16, 2010 @ 03:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Static gets his own comic again in 2011
DC Comics announced on their Source blog today that former cartoon star Static would get his own ongoing series again next year. Felicia Henderson, who has written the character before in the pages of Teen Titans, will write the title, while the art team will be announced at a later date.
“When I met Dan DiDio, the first character we ever discussed was Static,” Henderson told the Source. “Writing Teen Titans gave me an opportunity to play with this character a little. Now he’s getting his own book and I’m writing it! I’m a big Dwayne McDuffie’s fan, so it’s a privilege to reimagine the coming-of-age of a character he created. If not for the big bang, Static would be a regular, awkward, teenage guy trying to find himself — chasing girls, playing video games, downloading underground mixes of his favorite music. Instead, he has no time to find himself because the call of the superhero has found him. It’s a comic book writing dream for me.”
Static was one of the four original titles published by Milestone Media back in the 1990s, and his title ended in 1997 when the comics line was shuttered. He made the jump to TV in the form of an animated series, Static Shock, and joined the Teen Titans shortly after the Milestone characters were merged into the DC Universe in 2008.
- July 16, 2010 @ 02:38 PM by JK Parkin
SDCC ’10 | A look at Hasbro’s exclusive action figures
Hasbro sent over images of the action figures and toys they’ll be selling at Comic-Con International next week, including Thor, Galactus, Spider-Man and Captain America figures. Some of them will be available on HasbroToyShop.com after the show.
Check’em all out after the jump …
- July 16, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by JK Parkin
SDCC ’10 | DC, Batman and Smallville help open your hotel room door
In addition to the bags that Warner Bros. is offering at Comic-Con this year, they’re also bringing back the hotel room keys that they did at last year’s con. A total of 29,000 branded room keys, designed to promote DC Comic’s digital comics application, Batman: Under the Red Hood, V, Smallville and Supernatural, will be distributed at 36 participating hotels throughout the San Diego area during the week of the Con. You can find more details here, and check out additional key artwork after the jump.
- July 16, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by JK Parkin
Quote of the day | Warren Ellis, on the resurrected ‘Shoot’
Hellblazer: Shoot
“I remember that, at the time, someone telling me that the stance was that Paul Levitz would not release the book so long as he was running DC. It never occurred to me that a new regime would feel differently.”
– writer Warren Ellis, responding to news that his 1999 Hellblazer story “Shoot,” which was never published as a result of the Columbine shootings, will finally be released under the new “Vertigo Resurrected” banner
- July 16, 2010 @ 12:30 PM by Kevin Melrose
Crayon Shin-chan to return despite creator’s demise
Manga Town
Legacy comics, which continue on long after their creator’s death, are common in the U.S. but less so in Japan. However, Crayon Shin-chan, the story of a mischievous little boy who drives his mother crazy with his smart talk and childish pranks, will continue despite the fact that creator Yoshito Usui died last September, presumably from a fall from a cliff while hiking. He had built up a big enough backlog that the series continued to run until March in the monthly magazine Manga Town, and then it stopped. But now, the Mainichi Daily News reports, thanks to popular demand, Usui’s assistants are reviving the comic starting with the September issue.
Crayon Shin-chan was first published in the U.S. by Comics One and then, after that company became defunct, it was picked up with a new translation by CMX Manga—now also defunct. One begins to wonder if it isn’t cursed, except that the anime is still going strong.
- July 16, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
SDCC Wishlist | Skottie Young’s Junk
Junk
Artist Skottie Young, whose The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from Marvel is up for a couple of Eisner awards this year, sends word that he’ll have copies of his artbook, Junk, in San Diego next week.
“This book is filled with everything you could want out of an art book. Sketches, doodles, experiments, paintings, concepts, digital drawing, success, failures, and everything in between. JUNK ONE gives you a look at the personal work of a fan favorite comic book artist and cartoonist,” reads the book’s description on Bigcartel.com, where it can be purchased online. “JUNK ONE is a limited edition art book of only 1000 copies.”
And speaking of Young, he’s working on a new graphic novel and has started chronicling its creation on his blog and in video form. Check out entries here, here, here and here.
- July 16, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by JK Parkin