2010 September
Francoise Mouly inks deal with Candlewick
When Francoise Mouly started the Toon Books line two years ago, she set it up as an independent publisher because no one was willing to buy into the notion of comics for preschoolers. When I spoke to her at the American Library Association meeting last June, she recalled talking to the publisher from one major house who loved the books but balked at investing the time and money necessary to create a new category.
So Mouly did it herself, publishing the Toon books as an imprint of RAW Junior, a small publishing company she runs with her husband Art Spiegelman. Until Oct. 1, when Toon Books will become an imprint of Candlewick Press, which is based in Somerville, Massachusetts. This means that both current titles and the backlist will be distributed by Random House, rather than Diamond Book Distributors, and Toon will continue to release four or five new books per year.
Full press release after the jump.
- September 8, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Vagabond, Vol. 30
Creators | Takehiko Inoue announced he’s placing his award-winning samurai adventure Vagabond on hiatus because of ongoing health problems. The manga has been serialized since 1998 in Kodansha’s Weekly Morning magazine and collected in 32 volumes; 31 of those have been released in the United States. Inoue will continue to work on his basketball manga Real, which is released at the more leisurely pace of about one volume per year. [The Eastern Edge, via Journalista]
Publishing | Todd Allen looks at moves by comics publishers to partner with OverDrive to make single-issue comics available to libraries as e-books: “With some 11,000 libraries being supplied digital material from OverDrive, this market offers a significant chance to get comics in front of new readers. According to the July 2010 sales estimates at ICV2, the Marvel Adventures version of Spider-Man sells 6,347 copies; Marvel Adventures Super Heroes sells 4,564. For a small publisher like Moonstone, the chance for more exposure is even greater.” [Publishers Weekly]
- September 8, 2010 @ 10:27 AM by Kevin Melrose
Create your own vampire-killing puppet to win Pinocchio,Vampire Slayer prizes
Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer poster
Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer creators Dusty Higgins and Van Jensen are holding a contest to support and promote the upcoming sequel to the book, Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer and the Great Puppet Theater. To enter, all you have to do is create your own vampire-killing puppet. Here are the complete details:
Pinocchio now has a few friends to help him in his ongoing battle with the vampire scourge. But the cast of the Great Puppet Theater won’t be enough to defeat the seemingly endless ranks of the undead.
Pinocchio needs an army of puppet warriors to fight the vampires, and that’s where you come in!
Design your own vampire-slaying puppet for the chance to win some serious swag from PINOCCHIO, VAMPIRE SLAYER AND THE GREAT PUPPET THEATER, the sequel to last fall’s breakout graphic novel by Dusty Higgins and Van Jensen.
Submissions can be sketches, costumes or actual puppets. Just make sure your creation is suited to battle the bloodsuckers!
The top entry will receive a signed copy of the new book and a piece of original art! Two runners up will receive signed copies of the book!
Images can be posted at the Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer Facebook page, tweeted to @p_vampireslayer or e-mailed to contest@pinocchiovampireslayer.com. All entries must be received by October 8.
Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer and the Great Puppet Theater hits shelves later this fall from SLG Publishing.
- September 8, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by JK Parkin
The Middle Ground #20: Set-Up, Punchline, Move On Already
I’m not sure when I first read my first longform comic. By “longform,” I mean “comics where the stories are more than five pages”; I grew up reading British anthologies like The Beano and The Dandy and Whizzer & Chips (I was a Chipite. Somewhere, someone on the internet knows what I’m talking about, and read that with a feeling of “I knew he was a Chipite. I hate Chipites!”) and Buster, and in each and every case, comics were short things of some kind of possibility.
Part of the reason for that was that the first comics I read as a kid were humor comics, and things like “story” came a very far second behind a mentality best described as “Tell the joke and get offstage as soon as possible” (It’s fair to say that, later, 2000AD worked on fairly similar lines, in a weird way: Get in, get to the point, get out and don’t stop in between). Looking back, there’s such an… I want to say “economy,” but I’m not entirely sure if that’s the right way of putting it… There’s such an urgency in those strips, such a feeling of “don’t waste anything” that, looking back at it now, after decades of reading the more relaxed, conversational American format, seems kind of mind-boggling, like finding punk before punk existed or something.
- September 7, 2010 @ 04:30 PM by Graeme McMillan
Read Jim Rugg’s Rambo 3.5 for free
from Rambo 3.5 by Jim Rugg
If you’ve ever thought that our whole al-Qaeda problem was nothing a little team-up between George W. Bush and John J. Rambo couldn’t fix, then have I got the comic for you. Over on his blog, Afrodisiac/Street Angel artist Jim Rugg is offering free copies of his celebrated, Ignatz Award-nominated minicomic Rambo 3.5, in convenient Flickr, Comicpress, .cbr, .cbz and .pdf formats. Do we get to win this time? You’ll have to read the comic to find out!
- September 7, 2010 @ 03:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
Patrick Zircher’s variant cover for Carnage #1
Carnage #1 variant by Patrick Zircher
Marvel was kind enough to share Patrick Zircher’s variant cover for the first issue of Carnage, which hits stands Oct. 13. The book pits Iron Man and Spider-Man against Venom’s crazier cousin, Carnage, by the creative team of Zeb Wells and Clayton Crain.
More info on the book, plus two more of its covers, can be found after the jump.
- September 7, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by JK Parkin
Joe R. Lansdale and Sam Kieth to enter 30 Days of Night
The X-Files/30 Days of Night #1 (by Sam Kieth)
IDW Publishing will launch a new 30 Days of Night series next spring by author Joe R. Lansdale and artist Sam Kieth.
The comic, announced this morning in a very brief statement on the publisher’s Formspring account, will be at least the 13th title spun out of the popular 2002 miniseries by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith.
In the original, which was the basis for the 2007 film, vampires flock to Barrow, Alaska, where the sun sets for about 30 days, allowing them to feed on the residents. Although several of the sequels, such as Dark Days and Return to Barrow, center on the city or the survivors of the attacks, others are expansions of the “30 Days universe.” A six-issue X-Files/30 Days of Night crossover, by Niles, Adam Jones and Tom Mandrake, debuted from WildStorm in July.
Lansdale is an award-winning author known for his “Hap and Leonard” series of mystery novels, the novella Bubba Ho-Tep and comics like Jonah Hex: Riders of the Worm and Such, Conan and the Songs of the Dead, and Pigeons from Hell. He also wrote episodes of Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series, as well as the screenplay to the animated DC Showcase: Jonah Hex.
Kieth is best known for his comic turned animated series The Maxx, Zero Girl, Batman/Lobo: Deadly Serious and Arkham Asylum: Madness. He provided a variant cover for The X-Files/30 Days of Night #1.
- September 7, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Pulp-inspired Incognito variant cover by Sean Phillips
Sean Phillips, artist and co-creator of Incognito and Criminal, shares a variant cover to the upcoming first issue of Incognito: Bad Influences, the followup to his and Ed Brubaker’s 2008 miniseries:
Incognito: Bad Influences variant
- September 7, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
The Webcomics Factory launches a new product
Seems like just last week that Christian Beranek and Tony DiGerolamo were talking to CBR’s Steve Sunu about The Webcomics Factory, the multi-comic site they launched back in April. Already they have a sports comic, a stripper comic, a schoolgirl manga, and a post-apocalyptic gag comic, and today they are launching The Horror of Colony 6, a sci-fi comic, which will update every Tuesday. The comic is written by Beranek and DiGerolamo and illustrated by Tommy Phillips, and the trailer looks like a good intro to the series.
- September 7, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Dark Horse to resume two series
While PAX was making the big convention news this week, translator and blogger John Thomas stopped by the Portland, Oregon, anime con Kumoricon to catch the Dark Horse panel, and he bagged a scoop: Editors Carl Gustav Horn and Philip Simon announced that Dark Horse is bringing back two series that have been on hiatus for a while, Eden: It’s an Endless World and MPD-Psycho.
While the past two years have been tough ones for manga publishers in general, Dark Horse has been sending out signals lately that they are doing OK, most notably on their Facebook last month. In that post, they asked readers to tell them which manga they wanted to see, and apparently a consensus was reached. It doesn’t hurt that both titles made the very first New York Times “graphic books” best-seller list back in 2009, a feat that caused some puzzlement among manga readers, as neither has the sort of widespread appeal that lands series like Naruto and Black Butler on the list. While they are notorious for the slowness of their releases, Dark Horse does eventually deliver the goods, and Thomas noted that fans at the con were happy about the recent return of Bride of the Water God, which had disappeared for a while, and Dark Horse’s plans to release a volume of Gantz, a month for the next few months. Simon encouraged fans to lobby for the return of their favorites by e-mailing the company or commenting on their Facebook.
- September 7, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Changes afoot for Stumptown Comics Fest
The Stumptown Comics Fest is moving to a bigger venue next April, the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, in order to accommodate the ever-larger crowds that show up each year. “In recent years the exhibition hall has been packed to the gills,” notes the official announcement; “this move to the Convention Center will give attendees room to breathe with 30,000 square feet of exhibition space (nearly double the square footage) and will allow the amount of table to be increased with room for future growth.”
In other news, Indigo Kelleigh, one of the founders of the fest, is returning as its director. Kelleigh, who took some time off to focus on his own work (he is the creator of the Tintinnesque webcomic Ellie Connelly), is back in the director’s chair, and he plans to expand the show beyond its indy roots to include some of the more established creators in the area. This year’s guest list already includes Carla Speed McNeil, Molly Crabapple, Kurt Busiek, Larry Marder, and Barry Deutsch, who got his big break at Stumptown a few years ago: Agent Judith Hansen saw his comic, Hereville, at the show, and Scott McCloud, who had the booth next door, gave him a referral. Hansen took Deutsch on as a client and landed him a contract with Abrams, which will publish the book in October.
- September 7, 2010 @ 09:10 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
The Thing
Publishing | Marvel reportedly has issued a round of Digital Millennium Copyright Act notices to Google in an effort targeting Blogger sites that serve as clearinghouses for links to pirated comics. (Blogger was purchased by Google in 2003.) One such blog, Comics Invasion, already has been shut down. [Bleeding Cool]
Passings | Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Paul Conrad passed away Saturday of natural causes. He was 86. The winner of three Pulitzers, an achievement matched by just two other cartoonists in the post-World War II era, Conrad worked for the Los Angeles Times for nearly 30 years, and earned a place on President Nixon’s infamous “enemies list.” [Los Angeles Times, Comic Riffs]
- September 7, 2010 @ 09:08 AM by Kevin Melrose
Millar auctions off ‘title role’ in Superior for charity
Wizard #228 (Secret Jam Cover)
Like he’s done previously with characters in Kick-Ass and Nemesis, writer Mark Millar is once again auctioning off the opportunity to name one of his characters. This time around Millar is offering the naming rights to the young boy who transforms into Superior, star of the upcoming comic of the same name by Millar and artist Leinil Francis Yu.
The auction will once again benefit a special needs unit in a school where his brother, Dr. Bobby Millar, has been raising money for a new mini-bus.
“It’s amazing how much the Nemesis one made compared to the Kick-Ass one,” MIllar said on his forums. “We made about sixteen hundred bucks on the Dave Lizewski name (which went towards the school itself), but a whopping $17,000 (£10,000) for Nemesis and the first steps towards their mini-bus a few months back. This plus some private donations means they now have £10,000 left to get what they want: Not too shabby considering they only started raising this dough after Easter this year.”
“Stephen King did this a while back and it’s great. A reader gets their name in a book, I get a real name for a realistic wee character and some special needs kids get something they were needing. Perfect.”
You can place your bid on eBay.
- September 7, 2010 @ 05:00 AM by JK Parkin
Talking Comics with Tim | Joe Henderson
Scene from White Collar's Midseason Finale (USA)
Last week, I was chatting with comics writer Jim McCann, trying to pick his brain for interview ideas (my view of comics can sometimes be myopic, so I try expand the view where I can in a variety of ways). He mentioned to me that Joe Henderson, one of the writers/story editors on the USA Network series, White Collar, is a huge comic book fan. Normally, of course, I interview creators regarding upcoming projects here at Talking Comics with Tim. But with White Collar airing its midseason finale tomorrow night (September 7; 9 PM [for the East Coast]/8 PM [Central]), I thought I’d try something different and interview Henderson, partially about his comic book fan credentials, as well as what it’s like to work on White Collar. My thanks to McCann for helping arrange this, and Henderson, for his willingness to be interviewed, as he’s clearly a fan of comics (plus it was a blast to discuss White Collar with him).
Tim O’Shea: This interview originated with a suggestion from Jim McCann, who described you as a “huge comic book fan” (a characterization backed up by this GeekWeek article from January and your 2009 Witchblade story). Just to give folks an idea of your comic book affinity, can you single out some of your favorite creators and or characters?
Joe Henderson: First, a big thank you to Jim McCann, who is writing the awesome Hawkeye and Mockingbird that everyone should be reading.
The first name I have to mention is Mike Costa, who is doing an amazing job with GI Joe Cobra (IDW) and is a very good friend of mine. If you haven’t read Cobra, do yourself a favor a pick it up. Jason Aaron [O'Shea aside: Aaron's new column for CBR, Where the Hell Am I?, starts this Wednesday] and Jonathan Hickman are writing the most compelling comics I’ve read in a long time. Aaron’s grasp of Wolverine is fantastic—as far as I’m concerned he’s writing the definitive take on Logan. Hickman’s firing on all cylinders on FF and SHIELD is just crazy idea porn at its finest. Joe Kelly was wonderful on Amazing Spider-man—really, the whole writing team has been great since BND. Having said that, really excited to see Dan Slott take over and give it a more unified voice. Bendis‘ Ultimate Spider-man is the most consistently entertaining read out there. Can’t wait for [Matt] Fraction‘s Thor and [Ed] Brubaker‘s Super Soldier has been wonderful. At DC, [Geoff] Johns and [Peter] Tomasi have blown me away with what they’ve done with the Green Lantern universe and I thought Blackest Night was one of the most successful crossovers in a long time. I also loved all of Johns and Gary Frank‘s Superman stuff. [Paul] Cornell‘s work on Action Comics so far has been awesome—love what he’s doing with Lex Luthor. Fables [Bill Willingham] is always a great read…I’m forgetting tons of books I’m sure.
- September 6, 2010 @ 03:30 PM by Tim O'Shea
Discover/drink the comic that is also a beer
Yeast Hoist #15 by Ron Regé Jr.
Now this is the sort of format innovation I can get behind: Yeast Hoist #15, the latest in cartoonist/musician Ron Regé Jr.‘s long-running (mostly) self-published alternative-comics series, is part comic, part limited-edition bottle of beer.
The aptly named Yeast Hoist #15 includes a 16.9-ounce bottle of St. Sebastiaan Golden Ale from Belgium’s Brouwerij Sterkens. A screenprinted Regé illustration graces the bottle, which comes complete with a minicomic featuring Regé’s usual “inspired by mysticism and alchemy” cosmic comics shenanigans. I’ll drink to that!
Tipplers and/or comics connoisseurs may order the issue/bottle from Bierkraft — provided you’re 21 years old and can sign for the delivery, that is. If you don’t drink, don’t worry: Regé’s entire Yeast Hoist series is slated for publication on Jordan Crane’s webcomics portal What Things Do. Here are issues #1 and #2.
- September 6, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Sean T. Collins