2010 September
What if the Tea Party took over the comics section?
Teanuts, by Ward Sutton
In a curious but somewhat-amusing turn, The Boston Globe had cartoonist Ward Sutton create a parody of what the comics section might look like if it were taken over by the Tea Party. What he comes up with are strips like B.P. (rather than B.C.), Dennis the IRS Menace, Nancy (Pelosi), Calvinist and Hobbes, and so on — 18 in all.
- September 27, 2010 @ 09:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
Buy groceries, help Hero artists!
BOOM! Studios and the non-profit organization The Hero Initiative have partnered with four Southwest grocery chains for a partnership to benefit comic creators in need. Ralphs, Food4Less, Cala Foods and Bell Markets will make a donation to The Hero Initiative every time someone shops at their stores with one of their rewards cards as part of their “Community Contributions” program.
Full details below:
- September 27, 2010 @ 08:30 AM by Chris Arrant
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
DC Comics
Publishing | Following Friday’s news that as many as 80 employees will be relocated or fired in DC Entertainment’s restructuring, Rich Johnston claims that most of the staff reduction will come from the end of temporary contracts. “DC has made it a policy to replace outgoing support staff with temporary staff for just this eventuality,” he writes. “New positions will open in Burbank to cover what is now needed over there, but there will be no cross-country moving arrangements for temps to fill them.”
Sean Kleefeld, meanwhile, provides commentary on the cuts: “Those layoffs? Those are for actual employees. Those are going to be admins and accountants and file clerks and licensing specialists and whatnot. Probably an editor or three. People who come in to DC’s offices in New York City to do their job. But what about the comic creators who also suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them? With Wildstorm and Zuda going away, won’t that mean all those creators who were working on books under those imprints no longer have an outlet for their work?” [Bleeding Cool, Kleefeld on Comics]
Digital comics | Deb Aoki interviews comiXology CEO David Steinberger about distributing Tokyopop’s Hetalia: Axis Powers, and the possibility of more digital manga. [About.com]
- September 27, 2010 @ 08:05 AM by Kevin Melrose
Libre confirms cease-and-desist notices
The Japanese Boys Love publisher Libre has confirmed reports that it has been sending cease-and-desist notices to scanlation groups working in English.
Libre told ANN that, as a publisher, it was entrusted with the rights to these works by their authors, so it is important for the company protect those rights. Libre wants readers — not just in Japan, but worldwide — to understand that “protecting the authors’ rights goes hand-in-hand with producing their works.” Libre pointed towards a page on its website which details its stance on copyrights.
Libre’s move is unusual in that the groups in question are mostly scanlating unlicensed manga — unlike more blatant groups such as Manga Fox or Onemanga.com who scanlated or simply posted scans of already licensed English-language manga on their sites.
Since last April, Libre’s parent company Animate has been publishing yaoi manga in both English and Japanese on the Kindle.
- September 27, 2010 @ 07:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
What Are You Reading?
Welcome to What Are You Reading?, our weekly survey of your noble Robot 6 bloggers’ most recent reading. This week, our special guest is Jason Thompson, author of Manga: The Complete Guide and The King of RPGs. Jason just wrapped up a year of giving away his surplus manga at Suvudu.com, an experience he wrote about at his Livejournal.
Michael May: Graphic Universe has a series called “History’s Kid Heroes” that I’ve been checking out. So far I’ve read The Snowshoeing Adventure of Milton Daub, Blizzard Trekker and The Stormy Adventure of Abbie Burgess, Lighthouse Keeper. They’re short, quick reads – about 30 pages – and exactly the kind of thing I would’ve checked out from the library as a kid. Each one tells the story of an adventurous experience in the life of a real, historical child.
- September 26, 2010 @ 12:25 PM by Brigid Alverson
Quote of the day | Dan Harmon, on reaction to ‘Donald Glover for Spider-Man’
Troy (Donald Glover) in the opening scene from the season premiere of "Community"
“Troy would definitely be a Spider-Man fan. He wrote a comic book that’s included as an extra in the season-one DVD. He’s a hybrid of nerd and jock. Nerds and jocks overlap in the area of bad-ass stuff, like robots and things that kill things … video games and total domination of this and that … And it’s definitely a cutesy inside wink at the Donald Glover for Spider-Man campaign, and the curious eruption of a previously unknown demographic of racist comic-book readers it ended up uncovering.”
– Dan Harmon, creator of NBC’s Community, explaining why Troy (Donald Glover)
wore Spider-Man pajamas in the opening scene of the season premiere
- September 26, 2010 @ 08:39 AM by Kevin Melrose
Six by 6 | Six awesome WildStorm titles
Sleeper #1
After 18 years, former Image studio and current DC Comics imprint WildStorm is shutting down this December. And as many have noted already, the house that Jim built has produced many awesome, memorable and even game-changing (to steal a phrase from Rob Liefeld) works in the last two decades.
Here are six of them that we found to be particularly awesome; let us know what we missed in the comments section.
1. Sleeper: There have been many comics that mash up superheroes with down-and-dirty genres like crime and espionage over the past decade; this may just be the best. The high concept is a gripping one: Super-spy Holden Carver is so deep undercover in an international super-criminal organization that when his one contact is placed in a coma, literally no one knows he’s secretly on the side of the angels. Carver’s predicament, the way he plays and gets played by both sides, his growing unwillingness or inability to draw the ethical lines needed to save his soul, if not his life–such is the stuff of a great crime drama. Superstar in the making Ed Brubaker brings all his talents and obsessions to the table here: his knack for crafting morally compromised characters while neither romanticizing their misdeeds nor softening them up, his recurring theme of how the secrets and sins of our pasts never truly leave us, his belief that damaged people seek out other damaged people to repair that damage, his eye for and ability to work with strong visual stylists. In this case that meant Sean Phillips, never better in his ability to believably root spectacular action and super-powers in a naturalist-noir milieu. All of this in a WildC.A.T.s spinoff, proving just how wild WildStorm was once willing to go.
Even its relatively short run redounds to its benefit: The complete story of Holden Carver is yours to own inexpensively, read easily, and ponder at your leisure. (Sean T. Collins)
- September 25, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
The Fifth Color | Forward into the Past with Marvel’s December Solicits ’10
Why do his toes light up?
I hate Spider-Man costume changes. Yep, even the symbiote suit.
Let me amend that just slightly: I hate Spider-Man costume changes that this era’s Peter Parker makes, seemingly on a whim. Spider-Man 2099 and others of his ilk look just fine in their respective duds, it’s just when I get a splash page shot of a leaping lower-half in a crazy new outfit that I’m taken completely out of the story. It’s not the minor changes (under-arm webs, angles on the arms of the spider symbol, etc.), it’s the big ones where all I can think of is, “Man, someone’s trying to sell a new toy.” Then it’s whether they sell the toy through the direct market, what kind of packaging this new toy will have, any accessories, price point and then boom! Spidey’s saved the day and learned a new lesson about life and putting on his old costume anyways because we always prefer the original.
Now I know that fans do love the symbiote suit and yeah, it is pretty nifty with its simple design in slimming black and lower jaw distention, but it’s more nostalgia nifty than a desire for anything permanent. The storyline of how he got the suit, what it became and what it did to Peter Parker changed the style of Spidey stories for a whole decade. The costume was so popular, it got a new guy to wear him and then made a sort of ‘spinoff’ with Carnage. My sweaters do not do anything that cool when I donate them to the Salvation Army.
This success with the black suit has drilled a tiny hole in the House of Ideas so deep, it’s like they think every costume change they go with for Peter Parker is going to dress to impress. Scarlet Spider costume? No. Iron Spider costume? Used in Avengers: the Initiative for a few clones and promptly forgotten in the Heroic Age. There’s obviously more I could count but really, let’s not be the costume change that everyone is looking back on in a few years going, “Ha ha! He had glow-in-the-dark bits in his costume! How 2010!”
But do not fret! Now is not the time to panic! Now is the time to plan because, believe it or not, we only have 92 shopping days left until Christmas. Good thing Marvel sent us advance warning so that we can not only budget how much we spend on others so that we can also spend on our comics.
And that’s what Christmas is all about. Join me in looking over the December solicitations for Marvel Comics, won’t you?
- September 24, 2010 @ 04:00 PM by Carla Hoffman
Quote of the day | Bendis on comics journalism, again
Brian Michael Bendis
and quite a few writers complained to me today that they would write better but they aren’t getting paid to do it.
having lived the first 10 years of my career making no money and having lived with artists and writers who have done the same… I don’t care about that.
you either work really hard and really try to make something worthwhile or you don’t. money has nothing to do with it. if you find a way to make money doing it fantastic. that I lived for many years under the impression that I was never ever ever going to make a dime. and so did a great many of my peers. money and the quality of your work should have nothing to do with each other. it just an excuse to fail.
–Brian Michael Bendis on his message board today (echoing comments he made on Twitter earlier on), elaborating on his call yesterday for more in-depth comics criticism and journalism.
This isn’t quite what he’s talking about, but I did want to say a few words about this aspect of Bendis’s critique specifically. True, many artists in every art form toil primarily for love of the game, out of an innate need to create rather than out of hope for monetary reward. But journalism about and criticism of comics of the sort Bendis is calling for makes making comics, never the world’s most lucrative profession for the vast majority of people who participate in it, look like the California Gold Rush of 1848 by comparison. In a way, it stands to reason: Given the comparatively small number of paying gigs in comics, and the comparatively small audience for the product of those gigs, the number of paying gigs for comics criticism and journalism of any kind — including copy-and-paste and pseudo-hip snark, let alone in-depth investigative reporting and pages-long close reading of creators’ work — is going to be vanishingly low.
- September 24, 2010 @ 02:30 PM by Sean T. Collins
Muslim group condemns threats to cartoonist
The American Muslim, an online newsletter, has issued a statement titled “A Defense of Free Speech by American and Canadian Muslims” that condemns the threats made to Molly Norris (who drew a cartoon advocating Everybody Draw Mohammed Day), and Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park, which included a scene in which the Prophet Mohammed was depicted wearing a bear suit.
- September 24, 2010 @ 01:45 PM by Brigid Alverson
Comics College: Kim Deitch
The Search for Smilin' Ed
Comics College is a monthly feature where we provide an introductory guide to some of the comics medium’s most important auteurs and offer our best educated suggestions on how to become familiar with their body of work.
A rotten sinus cold/upset stomach plus an ungodly amount of day-job work has kept me from event attempting to work on Comics College. Thankfully, the ever-erudite Bill Kartalopoulos graciously volunteered to write this month’s entry, about the legendary underground cartoonist Kim Deitch. And it just so happens that Bill’s the perfect person to write about Deitch and his legacy, as he curated a show featuring the artist at MoCCA not too long ago and also wrote the intro for Deitch’s latest book, The Search for Smilin’ Ed.
So with that, I’m going to take some Advil and lie down. I leave you in Bill’s more than capable hands.
- September 24, 2010 @ 12:15 PM by Chris Mautner
Whilce Portacio to illustrate second Artifacts story arc
Artifacts #5
Top Cow has tapped Whilce Portacio to draw the second arc of their 13-issue event series Artifacts. The creator of Wetworks will follow Michael Broussard, the artist on the first four issues.
The 13-issue series, which will be drawn by four different art teams, weaves together storylines from several Top Cow books, including Witchblade, The Darkness and Angelus. The story revolves around 13 mystical artifacts that, when brought together, would bring about mankind’s destruction. A mysterious figure aims to do just that.
“This arc was specially set up for me,” he told USA Today. “I like doing tech stuff, but I also like doing dark and moody. In this case, that moodiness revolves around supernatural stuff and that’s right up my alley. This was a chance for me to artistically examine technology versus spirituality.”
Another artist will take over the book with issue nine, and “a special guest artist” will draw the last issue. The series is written by Ron Marz.
- September 24, 2010 @ 11:31 AM by JK Parkin
Pushing Daisies comic ‘will hopefully be out in early 2011′
Pushing Daisies
In one of his round-up posts where he answers questions about TV shows, Entertainment Weekly’s Michael Ausiello shares some news on the Pushing Daisies comic straight from series creator Brian Fuller:
“Issue number 1 will hopefully be out in early 2011, issue number 2 is being colored as we speak, and issue number 3 is being written,” Fuller said. “Our Emmy-award-winning composer Jim Dooley and I have been talking about giving the audience a multimedia experience with the comic—specifically a score. We have no idea whether we can actually afford to do an actual Pushing Daisies comic soundtrack (because the cast has agreed to sing songs and those licensing fees are expensive), but Jim has already started composing musical cues that we will either release officially or stream for freesies online when the comic book is published. I’ve already heard the track for Lee Pace’s cover ditty and it’s fantastic.”
Fuller began talking about the possibility of a Pushing Daisies comic not long after ABC canceled the quirky show about a pie maker who could bring the dead back to life. He said the comic will tie up loose ends left by Pushing Daisies‘ demise as the characters deal with a flash flood that empties bodies from a nearby cemetery. Previous reports also have said the book will run 12 issues and will be published by DC Comics.
- September 24, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by JK Parkin
Walking Dead moves to simultaneous print and digital release schedule
Walking Dead #77
With The Walking Dead television series debuting next month, Image Comics is aiming to get the comic series in front of as many people as possible — which includes releasing the series digitally at the same time it arrives in comic stores.
iFanboy points out that this past Wednesday Walking Dead #77 not only arrived in comic shops, but also hit the Image Comics and comiXology iPad applications. It’s priced at $2.99, the same as a physical copy; previous issues have been priced at $1.99.
Image publisher Eric Stephenson spoke with ComicsAlliance about it, noting that it isn’t a one-time thing:
“In terms of scheduling, the digital version of the series has caught up to print version, so it makes sense to release both simultaneously,” Stephenson told ComicsAlliance. “With the debut of the AMC television series only weeks away at this point, our aim is to make ‘The Walking Dead’ as widely available as possible, in all formats, and I believe everyone involved will ultimately find this beneficial.”
Publishers have slowly been dipping their toes into the water when it comes to simultaneous digital and print releases. DC Comics has been releasing the bi-weekly Justice League Generation Lost that way for awhile now, while Marvel released Invincible Iron Man Annual #1 in shops and digitally on the same day earlier this year — although at a higher price than the print copy.
- September 24, 2010 @ 09:18 AM by JK Parkin
DC Entertainment plans to move or fire 80 employees amid restructuring
DC Entertainment
As many as 80 employees will be fired or relocated in the restructuring of DC Entertainment that will see part of the company’s operations move from New York City to Burbank, Calif., according to a notice filed Wednesday with the New York State Department of Labor and reported by Bloomberg.
That amounts to nearly a third of DC’s estimated 250 employees. The filing doesn’t specify how many of those positions will be firings, and how many will be moved cross-country. The Los Angeles Times reported earlier this week that about 20 percent of the company’s staff “will lose their jobs as part of the shift,” a statement challenged by DC.
A Warner Bros. spokesman wouldn’t comment to Bloomberg on the specifics of the layoffs.
Announced on Tuesday, the reorganization leaves DC’s comics-publishing division in New York City while relocating the company’s administrative and digital and multimedia operations — including, presumably, the WildStorm offices now based in La Jolla, Calif. — to a Warner Bros.-managed property in Burbank. It was subsequently revealed that the WildStorm and Zuda imprints will close as part of the shakeup.
The labor department filing states that layoffs will begin on Dec. 27, and continue through Aug. 27, 2011, presumably the date when the move is expected to be complete.
DC executives are in the process of meeting individually with staff members to discuss their positions. “… There’s a spectrum of things that are happening for various employees – there are promotions, there are offers of relocation and unfortunately there are some layoffs to come,” DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson told Comic Book Resources on Tuesday. “Until that’s all sorted and people have had time to consider their individual opportunities and we confirm all that, which will take us a few weeks, we aren’t going to be able to discuss specifics.”
- September 24, 2010 @ 08:02 AM by Kevin Melrose