2010 July
Manley: Big publishers rule on the iPad (Updated)
DC's iPad app
Joey Manley has a provocative post up this week about where the energy is in the digital comics scene. While webcomics are the realm of individual creators making a name for themselves in nontraditional ways, it’s a different story on the iPad and other devices:
On my iPad, the best comics reading experience, bar none, is not from small, scrappy innovators. It’s from the big companies, via Comixology’s apps (the “Comics” one, which includes DC and a lot of other familiar publishers, and the “Marvel” one, which is exactly the same application, but limited in content to Marvel comics only). The deal is this: you buy “issues” of printed comic books, which have been repurposed and re-engineered to be read more easily on the device.
Manley gets right away that these devices are a digital newsstand bringing DC and Marvel comics to a new audience, and he thinks the publishers could be doing a better job of repackaging them, but his main point is that the big, clumsy comics companies of yesteryear are doing the best job of exploiting this new platform. Of course, that’s because they have ComiXology to do the tech work for them; DC and Marvel are really just supplying content, and in this case, it’s mostly content that has already been published in other forms.
In the comments, SLG’s Dan Vado complains that indy comics are getting swept aside:
This is pretty much dead on. Comixology has all but stopped converting SLG titles in favor of, their words, “higher volume” sellers.
UPDATE: ComXology’s David Steinberger responds to Vado and the others in the same comment thread, saying that they remain committed to indie publishers:
To be clear, we’re dedicated to the indie market, and are investing a ton of our resources to make the access to our platform more equitable. We took the opportunities that we created with this platform, and now we’re catching up to being able to continue to get great books from all publishers.
- July 29, 2010 @ 08:30 AM by Brigid Alverson
Gorillas Riding Dinosuars | Royal Historians or Fanficcers?
The Royal Historian of Oz
Tommy Kovac and Andy Hirsch’s The Royal Historian of Oz reminds me that there’s a fine line we have to walk as fans of comics and adventure stories in general. At least, this is how it is for me. You tell me if it’s the same for you. I first noticed it around ten or fifteen years ago when I was really into Star Wars and Star Trek novels. I loved both of those franchises and couldn’t seem to get enough of their characters, so I tried – really hard – to keep up with those characters’ exploits in every medium I could: films, TV, comics, and books.
The bad thing was that the book publishers knew it. They knew they had me and between Wars and Trek they published new books just slowly enough to let me keep up, but quickly enough that I didn’t have time to read anything else. It was the No Time for Anything Else part that was their downfall. Frustrated that I was only reading Wars and Trek stuff, I quit them. Cold turkey. I love my old, favorite characters, but not so much that I’m willing to give up discovering new ones. That’s the tightrope.
It’s the same with comics. Even though they’re much quicker to read, most of us have limited time and money to spend on them. We have to make choices. And every time we choose a licensed comic or one about a corporate-owned or public-domain character, that’s one less creator-owned comic we can read. This isn’t a post about how creator-owned comics are better than corporate ones (‘cause that’s certainly not always true), but it is a post about balance. I’m not advocating that anyone give up corporate or licensed comics; I’m just saying that we need to be thoughtful about our purchases.
After the break: Royal Histories or Fanfics?
- July 28, 2010 @ 03:23 PM by Michael May
Send Us Your Shelf Porn!
Welcome to Shelf Porn, your weekly look at somebody’s shelves. Today’s contributor sent in a massive collection of action figures, toys, artwork and comics that he and his family have been building together.
If you’d like to share your collection, just drop me a line at jkparkin@yahoo.com with your write-up and some .jpg images.
And now let’s hear from Sean …
- July 28, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by JK Parkin
San Francisco comic shop owners star in new comic strip
from Graphic Novelty
Cartoonist Jon Adams has created a comic strip called Graphic Novelty for the San Francisco art site Bold Italic featuring three local comic book retailers (and two retailers who have written columns for CBR): James Sime from Isotope Comics, Brian Hibbs from Comix Experience and Leef Smith from Mission: Comics and Art. The strip details Adams’ comic store history and his impressions of the three shops.
“It’s four, free, full-color pages of autobio-journalism with a not-so-hidden cameo by artist Dave Johnson. (That last part may not be as appealing as it sounds once you see it.),” Adams said in an email. Go check it out.
- July 28, 2010 @ 01:02 PM by JK Parkin
Japanese publisher fined for using man’s likeness in manga
Zero-sen, Vol. 1
The Tokyo District Court this week ordered manga publisher Kodansha to pay about $6,300 after a manga artist used a photo of a real person as the basis for a character in the Oct. 21 issue of Weekly Shonen Jump, Anime News Network reports.
The court found that Zero-sen creator Atsushi Kase defamed the owner of an apparel company by using a photo of him from a fashion magazine to draw the leader of aVIP car gang called Oraora. The plaintiff, who originally sued for about $50,000, happens to sell Oraora-kei style clothing.
Debuting in 2008, Zero-sen centers on a World War II pilot who was frozen alive during an evacuation by the Japanese navy. He’s thawed in the present, and becomes a teacher for a bunch of high-school delinquents.
Anime Vice draws a lesson from the ruling: “Don’t copy out of magazines. Use your imagination! (or have a lot of money handy to pay off your court costs).”
- July 28, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Japanese readers unsympathetic to OneManga fans
Sankaku Complex (warning: NSFW!) translated some reaction from commenters at the Japanese forum 2ch to the recent announcement that OneManga.com is shutting down. They weren’t particularly sympathetic:
One Manga
“If you don’t release simultaneously with the Japanese release they will pirate them. They are that committed.”
“They get them even faster than the Japanese regions do. It’s too much…”
“What a bunch of crooks. They make a fortune off donations and advertising revenue. They pretend they are creators and heroes. I want to watch Hollywood movies and American dramas at the same time as their US release. Of course, for free.”
“Overseas manga is ridiculously expensive, so that’s probably behind One Manga’s popularity. However you look at it, ¥2,000 for a single volume is way too much.”
“If the prices drop they’ll just start using censorship as an excuse instead.”
“They wouldn’t buy even if it were cheap. Their anime is far cheaper than in Japan and they still won’t buy.”
The name-calling continues in a second post, in which the 2ch users react to the comments to the first post. What’s interesting here is that scanlators like to say that they are good for manga by promoting its popularity in other languages; the Japanese don’t seem to buy into that, and in fact some commenters complained that publishing unedited manga leads to a backlash:
- July 28, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
SDCC ’10 | Are you worthy? Thor video game teaser trailer
SEGA has released the teaser trailer that debuted at Comic-Con last week (Last week? It feels like I was there months ago) for the Thor video game:
Coming next year to the Xbox 360, PlayStation3, PSP system, Wii and Nintendo DS, this third person action adventure features an original storyline exclusive to the videogame, for which writer Matt Fraction served as story consultant.
Of course, that isn’t Thor’s only upcoming video game appearance … he’ll also be a playable character in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, as learned at Comic-Con as well. You can check him out in that after the jump.
- July 28, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by JK Parkin
Moto Hagio speaks
A Drunken Dream
As manga fans well know, manga creators (manga-ka) are very reticent about talking about anything interesting. The chat sections of manga are filled with accounts of their favorite pastries or sketches of their cats, and interviews seldom go beyond “I am trying very hard to make a manga that my fans will enjoy.” So Shaenon Garrity’s interview with Moto Hagio (and her translator, Matt Thorn), is a bracing blast of fresh air. Hagio is one of the most respected manga-ka both inside and outside Japan, but her work is hard to find in English; that’s about to change with Fantagraphics’ release of A Drunken Dream and Other Stories.
In the interview, Hagio discussed her influences, including American science fiction writers Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ray Bradbury, as well as manga-ka Osamu Tezuka, Shotaro Ishinomori, and Leiji Matsumoto. And she gets into some issues as well:
SG: Your work also shows the influence of psychological theories. How did you get interested in psychology, and how has it affected your writing?
MH: I had always been interested in psychology, but when I was in my late twenties my relationship with my parents, which had never been very good, got worse and worse. To try to understand them, I started to read more about psychology. Unfortunately, most of the books at the time talked about people with clearly defined mental illnesses and where they could go for treatment. There wasn’t as much about people who were just ornery.
Finally I turned to a book on astrology and compared my parents’ birthdates with my own. According to the book, we were just incompatible.
Later on, Hagio discusses how that factors into her use of fantasy to describe real-life situations:
You can analyze it in different ways, and there’s a cause somewhere in there, but it’s not a cause you can explain rationally. I try to capture that feeling through fantasy.
There’s plenty more there, and at one point Hagio turns the tables and starts quizzing Garrity about why boys love manga is popular in the U.S. Good times!
- July 28, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Talking Comics with Tim: Jen Van Meter
Amazing Spider-Man Presents: Black Cat 2
Today marks the release of the second issue in writer Jen Van Meter and artist Javier Pulido’s four-issue Amazing Spider-Man Presents: Black Cat miniseries. I recently had occasion to email interview Van Meter about the project, the overall collaboration experience and transitions, as well as near-term Hopeless Savages (Oni) plans (plus heist genre recommendations and covert gardening tips). After you read the interview, please be sure to check out the seven-page preview that CBR posted last week.
Tim O’Shea: In prepping for this miniseries, did you go back and read past Black Cat appearances for background? Are there any writers in particular whose approach to the character appealed to you more than others?
Jen Van Meter: I spent the most time with the early Marv Wolfman material, honestly. I like to go back to the beginning whenever I’m asked to take on a character I don’t feel I know well. The things I loved about her, particularly in Amazing Spider-Man 195, were her fierce determination and her strength — the Femme Fatale stuff is there, but it’s really overshadowed by her toughness in his treatment of her. I looked at or revisited many other appearances and caught up on the most recent stuff, but I think I really relied on Wolfman the most to tell me who she is.
- July 28, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Tim O'Shea
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Friends of Lulu
Organizations | Friends of Lulu President Valerie D’Orazio details the circumstances surrounding the recent and rapid decline of the 16-year-old group — questions about tax status, missing financial documents, an apparently absent board of directors — and states that, “If by September 2010 nobody steps forward and shows interest in helping run this organization, I will start taking steps to officially dissolve it as a non-profit.” [Occasional Superheroine]
Comic-Con | Two hours before Comic-Con International ended on Sunday, organizers sold out of all 15,000 Preview Night passes for the 2011 convention. (For comparison, the Preview Night memberships for this year’s event didn’t disappear until October.) These are the limited number of four-day memberships that include access to the Wednesday-night preview; regular four-day memberships presumably will go on sale in August. Collider has more details. [North County Times]
- July 28, 2010 @ 08:13 AM by Kevin Melrose
Food or Comics? | This week’s comics on a budget
Welcome once again to Food or Comics? Every week we talk about what comics we’d buy if we only had $15 to spend, if we only had $30 to spend and if we had extra money to spend on what we’re calling a “Splurge” item.
So join Brigid Alverson, Kevin Melrose and me as we run down what we’d buy this week, and check out Diamond’s release list to play along in our comments section.
Brigid Alverson
If I had $15 to spend …
Then I would be a very unhappy girl, because there are a ton of interesting looking comics that are coming out this week, and they all cost more than $15. If I had to limit it, I’d go for the first volume of Code Breaker, a new manga series from Del Rey that looks like it has promise; David Welsh, whose taste usually matches mine pretty well, says it’s much better than the cover and blurb would make it appear. That’s going to set me back $10.99, so I get one floppy with the remainder; I choose Time Lincoln: Fists of Fuhrer, vol. 1, just because it looks kind of awesome, and I can never get enough of Abraham Lincoln.
- July 27, 2010 @ 07:00 PM by JK Parkin
Girl Genius continues march to world domination
Girl Genius, Vol. 9
Phil and Kaja Foglio are best known among fans as the creators of the long-running (and award-winning) webcomic Girl Genius, and among comics insiders for being among the first to make the web-to-print thing work. They started out with a periodical comic, then moved it to the web, and eventually gave up on floppies and went straight to trades, boosting their sales by giving away the comic for free. (You can read all about it here.)
But apparently, that was just the beginning. Today the Foglios announced a series of deals that will bring Girl Genius into a variety of new formats:
- Night Shade Books will publish a series of Girl Genius prose novels;
- Brilliance Audio will adapt these novels into audiobooks;
- Tor will launch their graphic novel line with a color omnibus edition of the first three Girl Genius graphic novels; and
- Girl Genius will be serialized in the Danish magazine Comic Party.
As if that weren’t enough, the Foglios are busy working on their next two self-published volumes and negotiating other Girl Genius licenses. iPad and Facebook games, as well as a re-issue of the card game, are in the works.
Full details after the cut.
- July 27, 2010 @ 05:57 PM by Brigid Alverson
The Middle Ground #14: And In The End…
See, if I was really professional, I’d have a con report already and lined up for you to read, analyzing the lay of the comic land at the con, what the buzz book was, who the up-and-comers were, that kind of thing. But, I’m sad to say, I’m not really professional. Continue Reading »
- July 27, 2010 @ 02:30 PM by Graeme McMillan
THQ releases trailer for Marvel Super Hero Squad: The Infinity Gauntlet
THQ has released the trailer to the upcoming sequel to the Marvel Super Hero Squad video game, which is subtitled The Infinity Gauntlet. Go check it out.
- July 27, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by JK Parkin
SDCC ’10 | Carla Speed McNeil & Grant Morrison agree – let fiction be fictional
Over on the CBR mothership, Pam Auditore has a report on Finder writer/artist Carla Speed McNeil’s spotlight panel. McNeil talks about her move to Dark Horse, her long history of self-publishing, and a variety of other topics, but it was the following passage that struck me:
from Carla Speed McNeil's Finder
One fan was interested in how much “science” was in her science fiction, stating, “I guess I’m sort of interested in where the line between science and science fiction breaks with rules of science and reality.”
Laughing, McNeil answered, “Most of us don’t know the rules of science. Most of us are not actual scientists, I hate to burst the bubble.”
The young man persisted, responding, “But I know you’re breaking rules. We know people can’t fly. Do you say to yourself, ‘Well, I know that can’t happen in the real world, but I need it to happen to fit the story’? What do you do?”
In reply McNeil said, “Well, I generally follow the rule of cool – if something is exciting to you as a story element, it doesn’t matter if its about a person’s relationship or their job prospects. It’s not different. Whether or not a layered dome city, which is what I have in ‘Finder,’ is impractical [doesn't matter]. It’s whether or not it seems like it makes for something cool in the story. Something that gives you an emotional aspect to the environment that people are living in. It took me a quite a long time to realize that super-heroes are not actually science fiction. From the time I was eeny-weeny, I thought they were, because they used ‘sciencey’ sort of terms. It wasn’t until I saw the first Spider-Man movie and having come back out having had a good time and never having liked Spider-Man to begin with, but I enjoyed it and it occurred to me, “It’s a personal fantasy narrative that’s been smacked on the head with a science stick till it sounds ‘sciencey,’ but in fact isn’t.
“Basically, almost all stories that are not hard SF have that core in them that you are taking, well one hopes, the emotional realities of a situation, and you’re sort of embroidering them with scientific fact,” McNeil continued.
- July 27, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Sean T. Collins