2010 July
Breaking: Scanlation giant One Manga is shutting down
One Manga
One Manga, the largest scanlation aggregator and one of the world’s most-visited websites, has announced it is essentially closing down next week following pressure from publishers. Although the forums will remain open, all manga scans will be removed from the site.
“It pains me to announce that this is the last week of manga reading on One Manga (!!),” One Manga administrator “Zabi” writes in a message on the site’s main page. “Manga publishers have recently changed their stance on manga scanlations and made it clear that they no longer approve of it. We have decided to abide by their wishes, and remove all manga content (regardless of licensing status) from the site. The removal of content will happen gradually (so you can at least finish some of the outstanding reading you have), but we expect all content to be gone by early next week (RIP OM July ’10).”
According to Google, One Manga is the 935th most-visited website in the world, with 4.2 million unique visitors each month.
In early June a coalition of Japanese and U.S. manga publishers announced it would take legal action against 30 sites that illegally post translated scans of their titles if the administrators didn’t “immediately cease their activities.” Within days, MangaHelpers began shutting down (while launching a platform for creators) and MangaFox started pulling licensed titles from its list. However, the closing of One Manga gives the coalition its biggest victory, by far, to date.
In the wake of the One Manga announcement, administrators set up a Facebook page, which already has almost 53,000 “Likes.”
(via MangaBlog)
- July 22, 2010 @ 05:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
SDCC ’10 | A roundup of Wednesday’s news [Updated]
Comic-Con International in San Diego doesn’t officially kick off until tomorrow, but they are hosting a preview night tonight. And not surprisingly, there were some announcements today, albeit not as many as we’ve seen on Wednesday in years past — or at least not as many as I remember on Wednesdays from years past. Maybe the fact that we’ve had so many announcements leading up to Comic-Con over the last week or so led to a quieter pre-con Wednesday. I won’t complain; instead, let’s see what was announced …
• BOOM! Studios announced at a press conference this afternoon that writers Paul Cornell and Chris Roberson would join Mark Waid as the trio of writers working with Stan Lee on a new line of comics. Cornell and artist Javier Pina will bring Soldier Zero to life in October, Mark Waid and Chad Hardin will tackle The Traveler in November, and Chris Roberson and Khary Randolph’s Starborn debuts in December.
- July 21, 2010 @ 10:00 PM by JK Parkin
Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs | Marvel Boy at the San Diego Ret-Con
Marvel Boy: The Uranian
As I’m writing this, folks are arriving in San Diego and getting settled for the big show. It’s going to be a busy weekend as comics fight with movies and TV for convention-goers’ attention. And as SDCC continues to diversify – adding bigger and bigger names to its attractions – I figured that maybe it would be appropriate to do the same thing here this week. We’re typically focused on creator-owned adventure comics, but at the risk of stepping on Tom and Carla’s toes, I’d like to discuss something this week that’s mostly an issue only for big-time, corporate-owned, super-hero comics.
We’re talking of course about retroactive continuity – retcons – that controversial thing that happens when a character’s adventures have gone on long enough that they include embarrassing things that need fixing. Or at least someone thinks they need fixing. People of course disagree about these things and that’s where the controversy comes in.
What reminded me of all this is Marvel Boy: The Uranian. Marvel Boy’s a fellow who’s been through a lot of continuity changes, most of which are documented in the collected edition of Jeff Parker and Felix Ruiz’s mini-series. It’s an excellent place to get a snapshot of both the positive and negative aspects of retconning.
Retcons: Hero or Menace? Or, Who Crusades for the Crusader? After the break.
- July 21, 2010 @ 08:30 PM by Michael May
SDCC ’10 | BOOM! Studios announces three new Stan Lee comics
At 80+, Stan Lee is the iron man of comics; he is all over SDCC this weekend, appearing not just with Boom! Studios but also touting his work for Archie Comics and Viz manga. Boom! Studios kicked things off by announcing that they will be publishing three superhero comics based on characters created by Lee and his company Pow! Entertainment: Soldier Zero, written by Paul Cornell (Doctor Who) with art by Javier Pina (Superman); The Traveler, written by Mark Waid with art by Chad Hardin (Amazing Spider-Man), and Starborn, written by Chris Roberson (iZombie) with art by Khary Randolph (The X-Men). CBR has posted interviews with Cornell, Waid, and Roberson about their work on the three titles.
Full press release after the cut.
- July 21, 2010 @ 08:15 PM by Brigid Alverson
Community‘s Kickpuncher kickpunches his way into comic book
Kickpuncher
When the first season of NBC’s Community comes out on DVD Sept. 21, it will kick punch.
A plot line on the show had community college students Troy and Abed create their own superhero, Kickpuncher, “the hero whose cyber-punches have the power of kicks.” Entertainment Weekly reports that when the DVD collection arrives, it will include a comic book starring the hero, written by the fictional Troy Barnes and drawn by a very real Jim Mahfood.
“The comic book is written by Troy Barnes, Donald Glover’s character, within the Greendale universe,” said executive producer Dan Harmon. “The idea is that he was in an art class with Jim Mahfood – who I’ve known for a long time — who’s a really cool underground, yet successful, comic book artist and muralist. The idea is that he’s an art student at Greendale and had an art class with Troy, who took a shine to his talents and decided to take him under his wing as a protégé and do this comic book. So it’s from the mind of Troy Barnes, which can be a little scattered. At times he’s not a master storyteller, but he is an entertainer.”
To see Kickpuncher in action on Community, check out the video after the jump …
- July 21, 2010 @ 06:58 PM by JK Parkin
Send Us Your Shelf Porn!
Hello and welcome once again to Shelf Porn, our weekly voyeuristic view into someone’s abode. Today’s Shelf Porn comes from Benjamin Bailey, who blogs over at Earth 616.
Remember, we can always use more Shelf Porn. If you’d like to participate, send your pictures (jpgs are fine) and your write-up to jkparkin@yahoo.com.
Now let’s hear from Benjamin …
- July 21, 2010 @ 05:00 PM by JK Parkin
Alan Moore rejects DC rights offer: ‘I don’t want Watchmen back’
Alan Moore
Alan Moore, whose tumultuous relationship with DC Comics is legendary, claims the publisher offered this week to return the rights to his most famous creation — in exchange for a concession.
“They offered me the rights to Watchmen back, if I would agree to some dopey prequels and sequels,” Moore told Underwire today. “So I just told them that if they said that 10 years ago, when I asked them for that, then yeah it might have worked. But these days I don’t want Watchmen back. Certainly, I don’t want it back under those kinds of terms.”
Rumors circulated earlier this year that the departure of Paul Levitz as president and publisher of DC cleared any in-house obstacles to further use of the Watchmen characters. However, Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee tell Underwire the company “would only revisit these iconic characters if the creative vision of any proposed new stories matched the quality set by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons nearly 25 years ago, and our first discussion on any of this would naturally be with the creators themselves.”
Moore, who created the groundbreaking 1986 miniseries with Gibbons, stopped working for DC in 1989 following disputes about Watchmen royalties and a proposed age-rating system. When WildStorm, which published Moore’s America’s Best Comics line, was sold to DC in 1998, the writer was assured of an editorial firewall protecting him from the parent company’s interference. However, there were still conflicts, most infamously the pulping of The Legion of Extraordinary Gentlemen #5, which contained an authentic vintage advertisement for the Marvel-brand douche.
Moore, who has refused royalties from film adaptations of his work, says he no longer even has a copy of Watchmen in his house. “The comics world has lots of unpleasant connections,” he tells Underwire, “when I think back over it, many of them to do with Watchmen.”
- July 21, 2010 @ 04:21 PM by Kevin Melrose
SDCC Wishlist | Hipp’s Stray Days, Moon and Ba’s print and much more
by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba
Down to the wire here, so let’s do a round-robin of a few more cool items you can get at the San Diego Comic-Con this year …
• Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba are bringing a new limited signed giclée print, which you can see to the right.
• Buenaventura Press is having a going-out-of-business sale at booth #1734. Alvin Buenaventura will be there, selling the last copies he has of Kramers Ergot 7, Boy’s Club by Matt Furie, The Gigantic Robot by Tom Gauld, original art and more.
• Gene Luen Yang has a new T-shirt he’ll be selling at the show.
• Terry Moore is bringing The Complete Paradise TOO — “a 360 page softcover book filled with hundreds and hundreds of my comic strips and cartoons, from high school to SIP to all the Kixie strips and Plato and Lizzie the axe-murderer… all for just $30.”
• Scott Morse will have a TON of items for sale at the show; you can find them here and here.
• Both Josh Howard and Humberto Ramos will have sketchbooks at the show. Sean Galloway, meanwhile, has a Spider-Man print.
- July 21, 2010 @ 04:13 PM by JK Parkin
SDCC ’10 | ‘San Diego’s annual Super Bowl,’ Hitler costumes and Creator-Con
Comic-Con International
With Comic-Con International kicking off in a few hours, the media circus is in full swing. Here are a few links to read while you’re waiting for the doors to open:
• The Washington Post’s Comic Riffs talks to Stan Lee, Dan DiDio and Sergio Aragones, among others, about whether or not the con should move to another city. “Vegas, please. I’m advocating for all the hookers. All those fanboys would be like manna dropping from heaven. Honestly, some of those folks in the Storm Trooper suits REALLY need a little action. Now that I’ve said that, I should mention that I’ll be appearing for my Comic Con speech in a storm troopers costume. I take it back,” said Bloom County creator Berkeley Breathed.
• USA Today spotlights video games, TV shows and movies that will be featured at the con this year, while the Wall Street Journal has their own list. Which ones will kill? The Hollywood Reporter might have some thoughts.
Heat Vision, meanwhile, talks to several screenwriters about adapting comics into movies.
• A popular topic with the media is costumes at Comic-Con; this one, about a Nazi memorabilia booth that’ll be set up at the show, is a bit more serious than you’d expect.
- July 21, 2010 @ 03:00 PM by JK Parkin
DC Universe Online voice cast includes Hamill, Conroy, Marsters, Baldwin
Get your ass kicked by Mark Hamill's Joker
Via press release, Sony announced several of the voices you’ll hear while playing the upcoming MMORPG DC Universe Online. The cast includes two mainstays of Gotham City, Mark Hamill as the Joker and Kevin Conroy as Batman, as well as Adam Baldwin as Superman, Gina Torres as Wonder Woman, Michelle Forbes as Circe and James Marsters as Lex Luthor. Forbes as Circe is inspired, given her role last season on HBO’s True Blood, and Baldwin as Superman should be fun.
The entire press release can be found after the jump. You can sign up for the beta on the official website.
- July 21, 2010 @ 02:30 PM by JK Parkin
Rehearsals for Spider-Man musical finally begin next month
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
Rehearsals for the full cast of the delay-plagued Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark will at long last begin on Aug. 16. Yes, the day that some Broadway observers swore would never arrive is less than four weeks away.
According to ArtsBeat, choreography rehearsals, including aerial flying lessons, for some cast members began on Monday (Variety had reported a flying workshop was held in early June). Reeve Carney, the only actor confirmed for the $52-million musical, tweeted yesterday that the first day was “pretty awesome”: “I honestly can’t believe I’m getting paid to do things my mom would have killed me for when I was a kid!”
The Julie Taymor-directed production, which features music and lyrics by U2’s Bono and the Edge, is expected to open in November or December, some eight months behind schedule.
Cash-flow obstacles triggered delays led to the departure of Evan Rachel Wood in March and Alan Cumming in April. Reports emerged last month that Next to Normal star Jennifer Damiano will replace Wood as Mary Jane Watson. However, the show’s producers have yet to make an announcement. It’s also been widely rumored that Patrick Page (The Lion King) will step in as Green Goblin.
With production costs of about $1 million a week, Spider-Man is expected to be the most expensive musical in Broadway history.
- July 21, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Talking Comics with Tim: A Friendly Game Creators
A Friendly Game
SLG Publishing‘s booth at SDCC [Booth #1815, right next to DC Comics] is going to be extremely busy this year with a number of SLG creators making appearances. Three first-time graphic novelists, Joe Pimienta, Lindsay Hornsby, and Lauren Affe, will be debuting their book, A Friendly Game, at SDCC–and will be at the SLG booth as well. The book (which SLG gave a 10-page preview here) is described as follows: “Friends play many kinds of games with each other: cops and robbers, checkers, tag. The best of friends will make up their own games. Todd and Kevin’s friendship is built on such a game. However, the rules and premise are far from the typical childhood games. A dispute amongst the two splits them into very different directions: one sees the game for the cruel act that it is, while the other decides it must move to the next level. Imagine No Country for Old Men crossed with Lord of the Flies, or even imagine if Johnny the Homicidal Maniac were once a little kid. There you have a Friendly Game.” Thanks to assistance from SLG’s Dan Vado and Jennifer de Guzman, I was able to email interview all three characters. If you’re at SDCC, be sure to check this book out while you’re there–and even if you’re not, once you read the preview–SLG’s made it quite convenient for you to order the book. It was a pleasure to interview the three creators and I hope this is the first of many times we’ll be seeing their names in years to come.
Tim O’Shea: Did the idea for this story find its start at Savannah College of Art and Design ([SCAD] where all three of you attended)?
Joe Pimienta: Yes. It originally started as an 8-page story I did for scripting class. But part of the assignment was to have drawn pages and character designs, so, I asked Lindsay to do that. Once I finished the assignment, I put it away and didn’t think about it until 6 months later when Lindsay took advanced scripting and asked me if we could develop the story more. I was surprised, since the subject matter was so different from what she normally does. We talked about a bigger story arc, making my short story only the first pages for the final story arc. It wasn’t until senior project, 2 years later, that we actually started drawing pages for it.
- July 21, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Tim O'Shea
Is the world ready for Foreskin Man?
Foreskin Man
“Intactivist” Miles Hastwick spends his days curating the Museum of Genital Integrity. But when a baby is in danger of having his foreskin removed by the evil Dr. Mutilator, Hastwick rips off his goatee and becomes Foreskin Man.
Written and created by Matthew Hess, president of an anti-circumcision organization, the comic “uses popular art to shine a spotlight on the practice of infant circumcision,” Hess told SalemNews.com. “Over the years there have been a lot of rationalizations and justifications to keep it going, but the bottom line is that forced circumcision violates human rights. I hope this story will help convince some people of that in a way that words alone cannot.”
The comic is about what you would expect in terms of plot; there’s a somewhat disturbing panel on the first page featuring a museum exhibit of a circumcision, but no real babies are harmed, by genital mutilation or otherwise. Probably the most graphic aspect of the comic is the fact that Foreskin Man walks around with a penis emblem on his chest. Uncircumcised, of course.
The 12-page comic can be downloaded or read online at Foreskinman.com.
- July 21, 2010 @ 12:30 PM by JK Parkin
The ‘essentially untrue’ comic-strip origins of Mad Men
Those Madison Avenue Men!
At Vanity Fair, Bruce Handy uncovers the long-lost inspiration for AMC’s hit series Mad Men: “an obscure comic strip from the early 1960s” by legendary artist Frank Thorne called Those Madison Avenue Men! Just how obscure was it? Handy asserts that at the peak of its 43-week run in spring 1961, Those Madison Avenue Men! appeared in just eight newspapers.
If you’ve never heard of the strip, that’s probably because it didn’t exist. It’s a pretty good gag, though (so good apparently that, despite clear signals to the contrary, the link is being passed around as fact).
- July 21, 2010 @ 12:01 PM by Kevin Melrose
Quote of the day | Tom DeFalco, on current comics and Spider-Girl: The End
Spider-Girl: The End #1
“I think there are a number of factors. For one, tastes change. I like to do stories that are paced a lot faster than the current style. I hate to see comics that have people standing around talking like they’re in a radio drama — a drama that is told entirely through dialogue. I actually enjoy a good radio drama, but radio is radio and comics are comics. I prefer to keep the action flowing with visual bits or sequential story-telling. I also go for broader action and emotional scenes. [...] Another factor is that I doubt many editors are currently reading my stuff. They remember me from when they were growing up and just assume they won’t like my writing now that they’re older. They think of Spider-Girl as a comic for ‘young kids’ and don’t think I’m capable of producing work for their ‘more mature’ titles. I can understand why they feel that way.”
– writer Tom DeFalco, explaining why he thinks the recently canceled Spider-Girl “is probably the last monthly comic book I will ever write for Marvel Comics”
- July 21, 2010 @ 11:12 AM by Kevin Melrose