2010 September
The Middle Ground #21: Everybody Is A Star
It was, of all things, the realization that I no longer have my copy of Kevin Huizenga’s Curses – which was loaned to someone before I moved states, and which, originally, borrowed from someone else who then moved far, far away; is that the definition of “play it forward”? – that made me realize: I am a sucker for comics that celebrate the weirdness within each and every single one of us.
- September 14, 2010 @ 03:00 PM by Graeme McMillan
Cruise the teenage wasteland with Dave Kiersh’s free online comic Buds
from Buds by Dave Kiersh
I’ve been a fan of Dave Kiersh‘s wistfully randy teen-nostalgia comics for nearly as long as I’ve been reading alternative comics at all. So naturally I was pretty delighted to discover Buds, Kiersh’s latest 32-page opus of crushes, cars, cheap beer, and denim-clad regret, available to read for free at MagCloud. Reading it will take you back to a time of after-school specials, teen idols, boom boxes and scrunchies. Oh yeah, you can buy the hard copy for a mere eight bucks. What are you waiting for, fellow former teenage dirtbags?
(via David Paggi)
- September 14, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
Food or Comics? | This week’s comics on a budget
Morning Glories #2
Welcome once again to our weekly round of “What would you buy if your budget was limited?” — or, as we call it, Food or Comics? Every week we set certain hypothetical spending limits on ourselves and go through the agony of trying to determine what comes home and what stays on the shelves. So join Brigid Alverson, Chris Mautner and me as we run down what comics we’d buy if we only had $15 and $30 to spend, as well as what we’d get if we had some “mad” money to splurge with.
Check out Diamond’s full release list if you’d like to play along in our comments section.
JK Parkin
If I had $15 …
Morning Glories #2 ($3.50)
Image promoted this book pretty heavily before it came out, and I hope it paid off … I really enjoyed the first issue, and I hope it sticks around for awhile.
Unwritten #17 ($3.99)
This issue hearkens back to the days of my youth with a “Choose Your Own Adventure” issue, as Mike Carey and Peter Gross continue to have fun with literature of all sorts (with an assist from Ryan Kelly this issue). I was always a total cheater — I would read ahead to get a good ending, which is probably what I’ll do with this issue.
- September 14, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by JK Parkin
Hitch, Rivera provide variant covers for Amazing Spider-Man #645, 646
Amazing Spider-Man #645 variant
Marvel sent over two variant covers for upcoming issues of Amazing Spider-Man; above is Bryan Hitch’s cover for issue #645, which is part of the “Origin Of The Species” storyline. And you can find Paolo Rivera’s cover for Amazing Spider-Man #646 after the jump ….
- September 14, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by JK Parkin
Graphic.ly to offer Marvel titles on multiple platforms, including desktop computers
Digital comics provider Graphic.ly, one of several digital comics companies that sells Marvel titles via an iPad application, announced via press release today that they will now offer single issues of Marvel titles on multiple platforms — including their desktop application, Android phones and more.
“This means that the vast collection of Marvel Comics, previously only available on the desktop via the Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited Platform on Marvel.com can now be downloaded and enjoyed by you on the Graphic.ly desktop application, also meaning that you no longer need to be connected to the Internet in order to read your Marvel Comics in full resolution on your desktop monitor,” noted iFanboy’s Ron Richards, the comics podcast/community owned by Graphic.ly. “Additionally, if you’re one of the millions who don’t actually have an iPad or iPhone (like me), you can now purchase, download and enjoy reading Marvel Comics on your desktop computer.”
The full press release can be found after the jump.
- September 14, 2010 @ 10:32 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
White Indian
Publishing | Dark Horse Comics and Vanguard Productions have reached an agreement on who will publish Frank Frazetta’s White Indian comics after each company had reached separate agreements with different members of the Frazetta family. Dark Horse has taken The Classic Comics Archives Vol. 1: White Indian off their schedule. Vanguard will release the Complete Frazetta White Indian Collection, while Dark Horse will collect all the post-Frazetta material that featured the character. [ICv2]
Passings | Mark Evanier reports that Jerry Grandenetti, who began his career as an art assistant to Will Eisner on The Spirit, passed away Feb. 17. Grandenetti’s work appeared in Creepy, Eerie, House of Mystery, Prez and Championship Sports, among many other titles. [News from Me]
Pricing | Douglas Wolk considers the higher price of comics: “Twenty years ago, the price of a new mainstream comic book was 75 cents, about to make the leap to a dollar, the same percentage they’re currently increasing. For a $20 bill, you could get a stack of a couple dozen titles, with some interesting indie experiments thrown in.
“Since then, the price of comics has zoomed far ahead of the cost of living: $20 in 1990 is the equivalent of a bit over $33 now, while new mainstream comic books have more than quadrupled in price. And what happens when comics abruptly increase their cover prices by a third while adding little or no extra content–and the $20 standard gets you all of five 22-page comic books that take a few minutes apiece to read–is that that value proposition gets a lot less enticing.” [Techland]
- September 14, 2010 @ 09:41 AM by JK Parkin
Voting is open for the Lulu Awards
Voting for the Lulu Awards is now open to the public, and the online ballot is here. The winners will be announced at the Long Beach Comic Con on October 29.
This has been a tough year for the Friends of Lulu, but they seem to be getting off to a fresh start with a new Board of Directors, and the fact that they were able to pull the awards together so quickly is a good sign.
(Full disclosure: I was a judge for last year’s Lulu Awards.)
Hit the jump for a full list of awards and nominees. Then pick your favorites and VOTE!!
- September 14, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Augustmageddon? Comics sales drop sharply
Brightest Day #7, the top seller for August
Maybe it was the heat (and the humidity). Maybe people decided to go out of town instead of going to the comics store. Maybe there just wasn’t anything good to buy. Whatever the reason, both comics and graphic novels sales “plummeted,” in the words of usually staid retailer site ICv2, last month. Comics sales were down 17% from August 2009, graphic novel sales were down 21%, and no individual monthly comic sold more than 100,000 copies. Even Scott Pilgrim couldn’t rescue this dog of a month.
The top-selling comic for August was Brightest Day #7, at 93,459 copies, followed by Brightest Day #8, at 91,546. The numbers drop off steadily but sharply after that, so by the time you get to the 25th comic, Batman: Odyssey #2, sales are 47,675, or about half that of the top seller. That looks frighteningly like exponential decay, but the graph flattens out after that, with every comic in the top 150 selling more than 10,000 copies. The bottom of the list is occupied by Lady Robotika #2, which sold a measly 2,646 copies.
As for graphic novels, the sixth volume of Scott Pilgrim topped the list, with 8,092 copies sold, and the fourth clocked in at number four, with 4,818 copies. On this chart, the number five book, Dark Tower: Battle of Jericho Hill, sold half as many copies as the top seller, although again, the graph flattens out after that. The bottom seller was Eden, with 329 copies. And it was clobberin’ time for manga: The top manga on the chart was vol. 51 of InuYasha, checking in at number 67 with 1,214 copies sold.
ICv2′s numbers reflect the direct market only. That is the market for monthly comics, but graphic novels could do better in retail bookstores—we’ll know when the BookScan numbers come out.
- September 14, 2010 @ 08:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Talking Comics with Tim | Jason
Werewolves of Montpellier
Hopefully, if you’ve been reading Robot 6 for any substantial amount of time, you’re familiar with the work of Jason. In this email interview, we discuss his latest work released from Fantagraphics, Werewolves of Montpellier (a book aptly summed up by the publisher as “a lycanthropic thriller, a romantic comedy, and an existential drama — basically, your typical Jason book”), as well as some ideas shared in his blog, cats without dogs. My thanks to Jason for the interview (and for reminding me why I love Hal Hartley films) and to Robot 6′s Sean T. Collins as well as Fantagraphics Jacq Cohen for helping to make this interview feasible.
Tim O’Shea: Cinema clearly informs your work, does your appreciation of film date back to your childhood-or when and how did it begin?
Jason: I read comics as a kid, and books like the Hardy Boys, but I think what made the biggest impression on me were movies. In the 70s there was just one Norwegian channel and every Monday night they showed a feature film. I would watch every one of those. And I still remember a lot of them, sometimes better than some movie I saw last year.
O’Shea: In the comments section of your blog, you wrote: ” I like movies, non-musicals, where the characters do a dance or sing a song. Like Rio Bravo, Buffalo 66, Bande à part or Simple Men. It’s something that doesn’t work in comics.” If you don’t think it works in comics, I’m curious why did you have Audrey sing Moon River (a scene that I thought worked, by the way)?
Jason: It’s just four panels of her singing, and I guess it sort of works. But take the dance sequence in Simple Men (Hal Hartley’s 1992 film) as an example. I don’t think that could be recreated in a comic. You don’t get into the music and start tapping your feet like you would in a movie.
- September 13, 2010 @ 03:30 PM by Tim O'Shea
First look at J. Scott Campbell’s cover for Uncanny X-Force #1
Uncanny X-Force #1 J. Scott Campbell variant
Marvel has unveiled J. Scott Campbell’s variant cover for Uncanny X-Force #1, which kicks off the new ongoing series by Rick Remender and Jerome Opeña. Debuting on Oct. 6, the title spins out of X-Men: Second Coming as Wolverine assembles a special team — Archangel, Psylocke, Deadpool and Fantomex — to take on missions that Cyclops doesn’t have the stomach for. First up: preventing Apocalypse from rising again.
See the full cover and solicitation details after the break:
- September 13, 2010 @ 03:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Buy tons of Drawn & Quarterly books for 30-40% off
Alternative comics’ Day of Deals continues: Drawn & Quarterly has launched its annual Warehouse Sale, the biggest sale of the year for the publisher. Nearly everything D&Q has in stock is available for 30-40% off the regular price: Chris Ware, Seth, Lynda Barry, Chester Brown, Kevin Huizenga, Rutu Modan, Ron Regé Jr., Gabrielle Bell, Jillian Tamaki, you name it. Between this and Top Shelf, you could basically build yourself a respectable bookshelf for practically peanuts.
- September 13, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
Dan Hipp introduces Piggy Brown, the Piglet Detective
Tooth Troll!
Dan Hipp celebrated his birthday last week by sharing a short comic starring Piggy Brown, the Piglet Detective, as he makes the world safe for teeth from Tooth Trolls. Read and enjoy … and happy belated birthday, Dan!
- September 13, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by JK Parkin
Bluewater to publish The Mis-Adventures Of Adam West
The Mis-Adventures Of Adam West
Although it’s been a few decades since Adam West played the title role in the 1960s TV series Batman, the actor is now moving from being a comic character to a comic creator. MTV announced today that The Mis-Adventures Of Adam West will debut in Spring 2011 from Bluewater Comics as an ongoing series co-written by West, Walter Fernandez Jr. and Arastao Maree.
Per the post on MTV’s Splash Page blog, the comic will feature “a dimension-hopping adventure featuring encounters both fictional and within [West's] real-life history.”
“That’s what I wanted: something that was more Walter Mitty or ‘Pink Panther,’ with adventure the kids will love, and action,” he told reporter Rick Marshall. “For example, an adventure might be based on him meeting Batman and how he feels about it. . . He might even be meeting himself as Mayor West on ‘Family Guy,’ and laughing at it or along with it. There are so many ways to go, as you know — especially with the audience today. I have this incredibly wonderful fanbase out there, and I know they’ll love this.”
It will be interesting to see how they pull off a meeting with Batman that doesn’t have the lawyers at Warner Bros. calling a foul. The book will feature interior art by Lipe, who drew another famous 1960s TV star in William Shatner Presents: TekWar, with covers by Matt Bellisle.
- September 13, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
Buy tons of Top Shelf books for $3
You can buy this book for three bucks
Goodness gracious, look at all the terrific titles that are on sale for $3 over at Top Shelf Productions’ website. That’s some 70 in all, including books by Alan Moore, Jeffrey Brown, James Kochalka, Scott Morse, Liz Prince, and Renee French. Another 30-plus comics and graphic novels are also on sale for suitably impressive amounts — the complete Lost Girls from Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie and the complete Alec: The Years Have Pants by Eddie Campbell may be purchased for just $25 and $20 respectively, for pete’s sake. Top Shelf’s $3 Sale lasts through Friday, September 24th, so get ‘em while the gettin’s good!
- September 13, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
Superman #703 turns out to be kryptonite for Cincinnati retailer
Superman #703
A few weeks ago, Cincinnati retailer Kendall Swafford sparked a debate at ICv2.com when he took his DC Comics sales representative, by name, to task for the publisher’s lack of promotional support for Superman #703. You see, that’s the issue in which the Man of Steel swings through the Queen City during his much-ballyhooed cross-country trek. And Swafford’s store is named … Up Up & Away.
“Why isn’t DC on top of this?” Swafford asked. “Why isn’t someone from DC Entertainment playing the point man and helping to coordinate efforts to increase sales of the book? This book, if nothing else, plays on our feelings of civic pride, the same way we collectively share in the winning ways of local sports teams.”
DC didn’t send posters of the comic’s cover or offer help to coordinate press releases or line up an actor to play Superman, he complained: “I’m not looking for someone to do my job for me, I’m looking for someone on their end to help realize this book’s potential.” Several retailers chimed in to defend the sales rep, and to point out it’s not his job to handle publicity, leading Kendall to question the position rather than the employee. “That DC had no one from publicity, sales or even janitorial playing point man on this Superman event is frustrating to me,” he wrote in response to criticism.
However, Swafford didn’t let his frustration with DC get in the way of promoting the issue or his store, located in the Cincinnati suburb of Cheviot (it’s “a one-square-mile town within the city,” he explained). He teamed up with organizers of Saturday’s Cincinnati Comic Expo to promote the issue in Cheviot’s Harvest Home Parade, hired a Superman actor, printed banners, sent out a press release. Cheviot Mayor Samuel Keller even declared Sept. 15 as “Superman Day.”
There’s just one little problem: DC revealed that Superman #703 won’t be released this week, as originally planned, but a month later (there won’t be an issue at all in September).
- September 13, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Kevin Melrose