2010 September
Comic students take note: Jay Kennedy Scholarship!
On the fabulous Drawn! blog, artist John Martz has released the poster he designed for this year’s Jay Kennedy Scholarship. It’s well-designed and -illustrated poster, and also a good cause any self-respecting comics fan or creator can get behind.
The Jay Kennedy Scholarship is named after the late King Features comics editor, and is given out at the Reuben Awards banquet each year by the National Cartoonists Society Foundation. If you’re a student residing in North America seeking to go to a university or college for the comics discipline, you’re eligible — and encouraged to apply!
- September 3, 2010 @ 11:45 AM by Chris Arrant
Turning on a paradigm
At The Sci-Fi Block, Robert Ring talked to BOOM! Studios Marketing Director Chip Mosher about the company’s decision to put its backlist online. This seems to have expanded the publisher’s market rather than cannibalize print sales, and Mosher explains why:
Before we went whole-hog, spread-eagle on making the whole BOOM! Studios back list available, we parsed the data and found out that 40% of the consumers of our digital comics are foreign. They are overseas, outside the country. So, that was really interesting. And that has stayed true. In the other surveys we’ve done we’ve found that about 20% of the people had never bought a comic book before, and then the rest were people who just hadn’t been to a comic shop in the last ten years.
He goes on to say that it’s a false analogy to compare the digitization of comics to the music business, because comics are consumed differently: For the existing fan base, going to the comic store and getting the print comic is part of the experience. Digital comics are a way to reach the millions of people who never set foot in a comics store.
- September 3, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by Brigid Alverson
Watch the Batman: The Brave and the Bold video game trailer
WB Games has released a fairly amusing animated commercial for its Batman: The Brave and the Bold video game. As Rob Bricken points out, it’s essentially “a free, three-minute-long cartoon,” with Bat-Mite, Batman and Green Arrow trying to sell viewers on how awesome the tie-in merchandise is. So, basically, it’s like 95 percent of the Saturday morning cartoons in the 1980s, before the FCC ruined everything.
But anyway, Batman: The Brave and the Bold — The Videogame, developed by WayForward Technologies, is a side-scroller beat ‘em up/platformer with levels designed as episodes. In each, Batman teams up with another superhero — among them, Aquaman, Blue Beetle, Black Canary and Guy Gardner — to stop one of several villains. The game will be released on Tuesday for the Wii and Nintendo DS.
- September 3, 2010 @ 09:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
Dean Haspiel talks Cuba, Deadpool, Woodgod and missing Harvey
Photographed by Seth Kushner
This has been a year of ups and downs for Dean Haspiel.
He’s riding high after last week’s win at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards. He, along with the crew of the HBO series Bored To Death, won for outstanding main title design, and Haspiel returned to his native New York City to continue the promotional blitz for his upcoming graphic novel Cuba: My Revolution with artist and family friend Inverna Lockpez. He just had a short feature published in Marvel’s Deadpool #1000 and has more work on the way for the House of Ideas. But this was also the year his friend and longtime collaborator Harvey Pekar passed away.
Throughout it all, Haspiel has become one of the strongest independent voices of comics (or “comix,” as he would say). His years of networking and socializing in the New York City comics scene came to fruition in 2006 with the inception of the ACT-I-VATE collective, resulting in several series making the jump from web to print in IDW Publishing’s ACT-I-VATE Primer. He continues to be a driving force in webcomics, with the third installment of his semi-autobiographical series Street Code just out from Zuda‘s newly transplanted home on Apple’s mobile-phone platform.
Today, he has a girlfriend, a studio full of friends dubbed DEEP6, a Sept. 15 signing at Midtown Comics, and new work appearing later this month in the second season of Bored To Death. On a recent morning, I talked to Dean by phone before he rode his bike to his nearby studio.
- September 3, 2010 @ 08:30 AM by Chris Arrant
From the bin: Webcomickers’ take on DC’s finest
Last night, cartoonists Cameron Stewart and Ramon Perez posted interesting information and images about some failed pitches for DC Comics. According to both Stewart and Perez, DC had approach them and “a handful of other webcomics creators” to dream up some concepts for webcomics featuring DC superhero characters for possible inclusion on DC’s Zuda website. Here’s what they came up with:
Zatanna pitch by Cameron Stewart
Cameron said that “After a lot of thought I settled on Zatanna, in a kind of Buffy/Twilight-style story aimed at teen girls.”
- September 3, 2010 @ 07:30 AM by Chris Arrant
Grumpy Old Fan | The singularities of Earth-Two
Infinity, Inc. #1
This business about both Bruce and Dick being Batman (or “Batmen,” I guess) got me thinking about Earth-Two.
At the risk of being remedial — and some of you may want to skip to the next paragraph — Earth-Two was the home of DC’s original-formula superheroes, whose adventures took place roughly in real time. Superman first appeared in 1938, Batman in 1939, Robin in 1940, Wonder Woman in 1941, etc. It was the Justice Society’s Earth, where the Jay Garrick Flash had been around since 1940 before being “discovered” by Barry Allen decades later. Because the Golden Agers had all pretty much gone into semi-retirement, they had time to get married and raise kids. These children then became superheroes themselves. Earth-Two was retired itself in Crisis On Infinite Earths, but DC’s current Multiverse has its own Earth-2 (note the subtle change to numerals) which is very similar to the old one in most respects.
- September 2, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by Tom Bondurant
Al Jaffee’s illustrated biography
O
ne of Mad Magazine‘s best-known creators, Al Jaffee, is taking on the auspicious project of chronicling his own life. In the upcoming book Al Jaffee’s Mad Life, Jaffee joins writer Mary-Lou Wiseman to tell the story of the award-winning cartoonist — now 89 years old — who worked in several capacities at Mad, including the popular fold-ins.
Al Jaffee’s Mad Life chronicles the octogenarian’s start as a child in Lithuania, his family’s escape from the Third Reich, and his heights working for Mad Magazine. The book, which will include 65 new illustrations be Jaffee, is scheduled to come out in October.
In addition to the book, the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art is raising funds by way of Kickstarter for an Al Jaffee exhibit curated by Danny Fingeroth and Arye Kaplan. See more on that here.
And hey, Jaffee has a Facebook page!
- September 2, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Chris Arrant
Scott Pilgrim in Space!
Scott Pilgrim vs. Space by John Kantz
Alas, it’s not an announcement of a seventh volume for Bryan Lee O’Malley’s seminal series, nor a sequel to Edgar Wright’s genuinely excellent movie adaptation. But it is a pretty sweet pin-up of Scott Pilgrim, Gideon Graves, and an intimidating (even more than usual!) Ramona Flowers by John Kantz, art assistant on the series’ sixth and final volume, Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour. Let’s just hope Wallace Wells remembers to put on pants when gallivanting around the vacuum of deep space.
(via Bryan Lee O’Malley)
- September 2, 2010 @ 12:30 PM by Sean T. Collins
Read Mark Waid’s controversial Harvey Awards keynote address
And BOOM! goes the dynamite: Writer/editor Mark Waid has posted his keynote address from last weekend’s Harvey Awards on the CBR mothership. Arguably the most talked-about such speech since Frank Miller ripped up an issue of Wizard, Waid’s address tackled the thorny issues of copyright law, public domain, and digital piracy.
To hear Waid tell it in his intro to the CBR post, a combination of nervousness and not hitting certain points hard and often enough led some in the audience — including Sergio Aragonés, who confronted Waid about it — to believe Waid was attacking the very notion of creator ownership of art and defending illegal downloads. In reality, the speech was not nearly as radical, and a great deal more interesting. The most thought-provoking part of it, to my eyes, is the passage in which Waid argues that Internet culture, with the premium it places on distributing content people enjoy to as many other people as possible, has actually reinvigorated the notion that art has inherent value, in cultural terms if not financial ones:
And I’ll tell you why. It’s not because people “like stealing.” It’s because the greatest societal change in the last five years is that we are entering an era of sharing. Twitter and YouTube and Facebook–they’re all about sharing. Sharing links, sharing photographs, sending some video of some cat doing something stupid–that’s the era we’re entering. And whether or not you’re sharing things that technically aren’t yours to share, whether or not you’re angry because you see this as a “generation of entitlement,” that’s not the issue–the issue is, it’s happening, and the internet’s ability to reward sharing has reignited this concept that the public domain has cultural value.
Waid and his audience didn’t have the luxury you currently have, of being able to go through the speech at your leisure when you’re not reaching the end of a long convention day with a few vodkas under your belt. Take advantage, read the whole thing, and let us know what you think.
- September 2, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by Sean T. Collins
Marvel teases the return of Giant-Man in Avengers Academy
From Avengers Academy #7, by Ed McGuinness
Marvel has released two covers for December’s Avengers Academy #7 that tease the return of Giant-Man, which I presume means that Henry Pym, the man of a half-dozen identities, is giving up his current moniker — the Wasp, a slightly creepy tribute to his dead wife — in favor of his more classic costumed persona.
Pym, who debuted as Ant-Man in September 1962′s Tales to Astonish #35, first adopted the Giant-Man identity more than a year later, in Tales to Astonish #49. Over the decades, he has appeared most frequently as Ant-Man and Yellowjacket, and last returned to the Giant-Man guise in (I think) February 1998′s The Avengers (Vol. 3) #1.
See both covers, by Ed McGuinness and Mike McKone, after the break.
- September 2, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
Help Jim Woodring and his dream of giant pens
Renowned cartoonist and illustrator Jim Woodring is working on an auspicious project and he needs your help.
Woodring is constructing a giant steel pen and penholder in order to learn and demonstrate this piece of ancient technology through a series of performances. If he reaches his $4,500 goal, he will construct this pen and actually learn to use it for a series of public performances where he will ink large graphic drawings on 3′ x 5′ sheets of Bristol board. For more information, visit this website.
- September 2, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Chris Arrant
Nominees announced for Spike TV’s 2010 Scream Awards
Spike TV has announced the nominees for the fifth annual Scream Awards, which honor the best is science fiction, fantasy, horror and, yes, comic books. This year’s nominees were selected by an advisory board that includes Tim Burton, John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Neil Gaiman, Damon Lindelof, Eli Roth, Quentin Tarantino and Joss Whedon.
Here are the nominees in the three comics-specific categories:
Best Comic Book or Graphic Novel
• Asterios Polyp
• Blackest Night
• The Boys
• Chew
• Parker: The Hunter
• Scalped
• The Walking Dead
Best Comic Book Writer
• Jason Aaron (Scalped, Wolverine: Weapon X)
• Darwyn Cooke (Parker: The Hunter)
• Garth Ennis (Battlefields, The Boys, Crossed)
• Geoff Johns (Blackest Night, Brightest Day, The Flash, Green Lantern)
• Robert Kirkman (The Astounding Wolf-Man, Invincible, The Walking Dead)
• Mike Mignola (B.P.R.D.: 1947, Hellboy in Mexico, Witchfinder: In the Service of Angels)
Best Comic Book Artist
• Charlie Adlard (The Walking Dead)
• Darwyn Cooke (Parker: The Hunter)
• Fabio Moon (B.P.R.D.: 1947, Sugarshock)
• Frank Quitely (Batman and Robin)
• Jill Thompson (Beasts of Burden)
• J.H. Williams III (Detective Comics, Batwoman: Elegy)
The awards ceremony will be taped on Oct. 16 in Los Angeles and air Oct. 19 on Spike TV. You can see the full list of nominees at Spike.com, which encourages visitors to “vote now and vote often.”
- September 2, 2010 @ 09:15 AM by Kevin Melrose
YouTubers bring home the manga (and anime)
Anime News Network has picked up on a fascinating trend over on YouTube: Anime and manga fans who show off their swag to support the industry.
The manga industry’s push against scan sites, which resulted in the shutdown of OneManga, seems to have raised awareness across otakudom that watching pirated anime and reading bootleg manga online is illegal. The anime industry has been faltering for years—long before manga began to wobble in 2007—but the general tendency among fans is to blame the publishers (for high prices and bad translations), so this is an interesting shift. It also mirrors the trend of “haul videos,” in which shoppers show off the results of their latest shopping spree.
- September 2, 2010 @ 08:31 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1
Sales charts | Although Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World performed poorly at the box office, it continues to boost sales of the Bryan Lee O’Malley series on which it’s based. The six volumes claimed the top six spots on BookScan’s list of graphic novels sold in bookstores in August, followed at No. 7 by the latest volume of The Walking Dead, whose television adaptation debuts on Halloween on AMC. [ICv2.com]
Legal | The owners of BATS BBQ in Rock Hill, South Carolina, are digging in for a legal battle after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from DC Comics, which objects to their attempts to trademark the restaurant’s logo. [The Herald]
Publishing | Mark Millar discusses CLiNT Magazine, his new monthly venture with Titan Magazines that debuts today in the United Kingdom. [Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser]
- September 2, 2010 @ 08:13 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics creator allowed into U.S. after all
Dave McElfatrick
Wow, did I underestimate the power of the Internet! Back in July, I reported that Dave McElfatrick, one-fourth of the creative team behind the webcomic Cyanide & Happiness, was having trouble getting a visa to come to the United States from his native Ireland to collaborate with the rest of the creators. McElfatrick had applied for an O-1 visa, which is reserved for “aliens of extraordinary ability” in their fields. Apparently he didn’t cut the mustard, as he was turned down. So he started an Internet petition to convince immigration officials that he really does have a following.
I scoffed, but perhaps I shouldn’t have. After all, if your chosen field is making comics on the Internet, it makes sense to demonstrate you’re at the top of it by getting a lot of Internet users to vouch for you, even if they do have nonstandard names — and 4,000 pages of signatures is a lot of users. Or maybe Dave’s visa request crossed the desk of someone who actually reads the comic. Either way, he’s in, and we can only assume the madness will now increase.
(via Geekosystem)
- September 2, 2010 @ 07:30 AM by Brigid Alverson