2010 September
Draw monsters to benefit the CBLDF
Don't you forget about me ...
The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and ComicsAlliance have teamed up to raise money for the charity with a new art auction/exhibit called The Monsters Project. Right now they’re collecting monster-themed artwork, with plans to auction it off on eBay and at the Alternative Press Expo Oct. 16-17. Details on contributing can be found over on ComicsAlliance.
- September 22, 2010 @ 09:30 AM by JK Parkin
A real-time graph of webcomics income
Dorothy Gambrell, creator of the webcomic Cat and Girl, tracks her income via some nicely designed bar graphs that make interesting reading for anyone curious about the webcomics model. The graphs show not only how much she makes but what she makes it on as well as big expenditures (trip to MoCCA, printing books). In one way, Gambrell is living the stereotype: Her biggest source of income in most months is T-shirt sales, although she sold a lot of books in August. Freelance work also gives her a boost. The bottom line: So far this year, she has taken in $10,087.56 from her comic, a respectable second income but not enough to live on. And that isn’t her net—she has yet to deduct taxes, PayPal fees, and other expenses. One encouraging sign is that the overall trend is up; she had a dip in July, but August was her best month yet. Sean Kleefeld analyzed the numbers a bit and figures she’ll end the year with a gross income of about $20,000.
- September 22, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival announces guests, new venue
Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival
Details have been announced for the second annual Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, which will be held on Dec. 4 at a new, larger location — Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Brooklyn, New York.
Special guests for the free, one-day event will include Lynda Barry, Kate Beaton, Gabrielle Bell, Charles Burns, Jordan Crane, Evan Dorkin, Renée French, Bill Griffith, Sammy Harkham, Irwin Hasen, Anders Nilsen, Paul Pope, Johnny Ryan, Leanne Shapton, Mark Allan Stamaty, Jillian Tamaki and Adrian Tomine.
The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival is organized by Desert Island, PictureBox and Bill Kartalopoulos.
Read the full press release after the break.
- September 22, 2010 @ 06:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
Food or Comics? | This week’s comics on a budget
The Purple Smurfs
Welcome 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 which comics come home and which ones stay 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.
Chris Mautner
If I had $15:
During the height of the 1980s Smurf craze, when the Saturday morning cartoon was sweeping the nation and there was Smurf-related merchandise everywhere, I distinctly remember walking into a stationary store and seeing an English adaptation of King Smurf, which I immediately purchased. I was aware at the time that the little blue characters had begun in France as comic book characters but was completely unprepared for how funny and delightful the original material was in comparison to the TV show. Sadly, it seemed like that book was the only entry way into that world for a long time.
All of which brings me to the point that this week sees the debut release of two new Smurf books from NBM’s Papercutz line — The Smurfs and The Magic Flute and The Purple Smurfs ($5.99 each). The first is a rather traditional band dessine comic starring medieval adventurers Johann and Peewit, and is mainly noticeable for being the first appearance of the Smurfs. The Purple Smurfs is more in the classic vein, an all-ages zombie tale in which a strange bug bite starts turning smurfs purple (black in the original French version) and hunting down the uncontaminated smurfs, all the while uttering a fearsome “Gnap!” It’s great stuff, and I’m very happy NBM is getting these classic tales by Yvan Delporte and Peyo out in the hands of kids (and grown-up kids like me) who can truly appreciate them.
- September 21, 2010 @ 04:00 PM by JK Parkin
The Middle Ground #22: Not What It Looks Like
I can’t help but feel there’s some kind of weird ageism in comics fandom, some idea that things were always better before, even if (especially if?) you weren’t there the first time around. Superhero fans worship at the altars of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Watchmen or whatever else, indie comics talk about Hate or the original Love & Rockets or whatever. I do the same thing, and then have to stop and remind myself that (a) I am talking nonsense and (b) it’s not really worth punching myself in the face about that, really.
- September 21, 2010 @ 03:00 PM by Graeme McMillan
Buy Scott Pilgrim on Amazon for $3.99-$4.49 apiece
Amazon is currently discounting copies of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s six-volume Scott Pilgrim series to an absolutely absurdly low price: Vols. 1 & 5 are available for $3.99, and Vols. 2, 3, 4, and 6 are available for $4.49. This means you can buy six acclaimed graphic novels — about a thousand pages of comics — for the cost of six and a half big-name superhero comics. Just sayin’.
(Via Bryan Lee O’Malley)
- September 21, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
Quote of the day II | A WildStorm hits Kurt Busiek
“Hoping for the best for friends at Wildstorm, and the business side of DC…All I know about this, I’ve learned from Twitter. I assume I’ll find out more when the guys at Wildstorm have dealt with whatever eruptions this is causing for them.
“To all who’ve been asking: They haven’t said anything yet about creator-owned Wildstorm books. Presumably they want to talk to us first. And right now, they’re busy absorbing what this means for them. So I doubt I’ll know anything for a day or two.”
–Astro City writer Kurt Busiek, whose guess as to how the move of much of DC’s business end to Burbank and the closure of WildStorm will impact his colleagues — not to mention on his long-running creator-owned title, heretofore published through that imprint — is apparently as good as ours.
- September 21, 2010 @ 01:30 PM by Sean T. Collins
DC Entertainment moving to L.A.; DC Comics staying in NYC; WildStorm and Zuda shutting down
Ending a year of industry speculation and acute employee anxiety, DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson announced today that the company’s multimedia business operations — including feature films, television, digital media, video games and consumer products — and its administrative wing will be relocating to Burbank, California, home of parent company Warner Bros. Entertainment. DC Comics, DC Entertainment’s publishing division, will remain in New York City.
Meanwhile, in a separate post on DC’s Source blog, DC Comics Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee announced the company will cease to publish comics under the WildStorm banner as of December. The imprint’s WildStorm Universe titles will end (though its characters are promised to return), its licensed and kids’ titles will instead be released as part of DC proper, and its editorial team will be restructured and folded into the Burbank-based DC Comics Digital wing. Finally, the struggling Zuda imprint, which already saw its foundational website shuttered in July, will cease to exist after this week, its future titles to be released under the DC banner.
Stay tuned to Comic Book Resources and Robot 6 for much more on these developments.
- September 21, 2010 @ 12:45 PM by Sean T. Collins
Stuart Hample: Eyewitness to history
Stuart Hample
I was surprised and dismayed to check in at The Comics Reporter and see that Stuart Hample passed away Sunday at the age of 84. Surprised, because I wouldn’t have guessed that he was 84—he was way too lively, although I suppose anyone who had hung out with Fred Allen and Al Capp couldn’t be that young—and dismayed because that means I won’t get to talk to him again.
I interviewed Stu last November, for an article in PWCW about Dread and Superficiality, a collection of his Inside Woody Allen comic strips. We talked for about two hours, and I took nine single-spaced pages of notes. He had some great stories about working with Woody Allen and other comedians of the time, most of which are in the book or the article, but the off-topic stuff was just as interesting.
“Everything I’ve done has no depth, but I had a wide array of careers,” Hample told me. “I’m a multimedia failure.” That’s not entirely true. In addition to collaborating with Woody Allen on the strip, he had several other newspaper comics, Children’s Letters to God and Rich and Famous. He was a writer for the TV show Kate and Allie, and as an adman, he got Al Capp to do ads for Wildroot Cream-Oil hair tonic. He even did a brief stint on Captain Kangaroo, in the show’s early days, as Mr. Artist. Sometimes Hample reached a bit too far, as when he tried to get James Thurber to draw an ad for General Electric and when he pitched a comic strip based on comedian Dick Gregory. Neither enterprise was a success, but they certainly were interesting failures.
I’m going to let Stu do the talking after the jump; read on for some of the stories he told in the interview, edited slightly for readability but not fact-checked at all.
- September 21, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Court strikes down two Oregon obscenity laws
Legal
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday struck down two Oregon laws that criminalized providing minors with “sexually explicit” materials, calling the statutes overly broad and a violation of the First Amendment.
Although the 2007 legislation was intended to target “hardcore pornography” and prevent the sexual abuse of children, the court found it could be applied to a wide array of materials, “ranging from standard sexual education materials to novels for children and young adults by Judy Blume.”
The decision came as a result of a lawsuit filed by a coalition of publishers and booksellers that included Dark Horse Comics and Powell’s Books, and supported by organizations like the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon.
Lawyers with the Oregon Department of Justice are studying the opinion, and haven’t decide whether to appeal the ruling, the Los Angeles Times reports.
- September 21, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Marvel and Graphic.ly part 2: Graphic.ly’s digital difference
Micah Baldwin
Does the world need another digital comics platform? Micah Baldwin, CEO of Graphic.ly, thinks it does. ComiXology was there first, with its own Comics reader and branded apps for Marvel and Archie comics, and Longbox claims to be forging the “iTunes for comics,” but Graphic.ly offers something more: The ability for readers to comment and chat with one another right on the comics page. Last week, Marvel Comics became the latest publisher to sign on to Graphic.ly, and since I had just talked to Ira Rubenstein of Marvel about the deal, it seemed an opportune time to check in with Baldwin and see how the rollout of Graphic.ly (currently available on Windows PD, Adobe Air, and iPad) is going.
Both Longbox and ComiXology offer the ability to read a comic across multiple platforms. How would you differentiate Graphic.ly from them?
There are plenty of platforms out there that are trying to be the largest comic book store online, the Diamond of digital. We are really focused on community building and creating what we believe is currently missing online, which is the replication of the old school comic book experience, where you go and hang out and talk about comics. It wasn’t just reading the book but also about sharing and discussing the story. That’s what our platform is built for.
- September 21, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Quote of the day | Larson’s Mercury takes the Direct Market’s temperature
“It’s utter BS that MERCURY is in its third printing, and yet unavailable through the direct market.”
–Cartoonist Hope Larson on her young adult graphic novel Mercury, which is apparently a hit everywhere but the one system of stores that’s supposed to specialize in selling graphic novels.
- September 21, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
Cartoonist’s WWII secret revealed
Vandersteen's work for collaborationist publications
Willy Vandersteen’s family set out to clear his name, but they ended up doing just the opposite.
Wim at the Forbidden Planet blog has the story: Vandersteen was a popular Belgian cartoonist who created the popular comic Suske en Wiske (also known as Bob et Bobette), which ran in the Belgian Journal de Tintin and its Dutch equivalent, Kuifje. Born in Antwerp in 1913, he took up cartooning around 1939 and got his first newspaper strip, in the paper De Dag, 1941. His career gathered momentum during the war, and Suske en Wiske was first published in 1945. His work continued to be popular until his death in 1990.
Although Vandersteen was a well loved cartoonist, rumors have long circulated that during the German occupation of Belgium, he did illustrations for books and magazines that were sympathetic to the occupation and had overtones of anti-Semitism. The drawings, which were signed with an alias, were done in a style similar to Vandersteen’s, but throughout his life, the artist denied any connection with it. Finally, to put the rumors at rest, Vandersteen’s family and his publisher, Standaard Uitgeverij, hired a group of independent historians to research the question.
- September 21, 2010 @ 08:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Does this JMS Wonder Woman cover look familiar to you?
It probably should: Wonder Woman #606′s variant-cover homage to Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” by Alex Garner is also just a bit similar to artist (and Marvel Editor in Chief) Joe Quesada’s promotional image for the J. Michael Straczynski Spider-Opus The Other. Why, that kind of playful tweak of the competition is almost…Marvelesque, isn’t it? I for one am hoping that this means that Leather-Jacket Wonder Woman will shoot spikes out of her arms and eat a dude’s face.
(via Marc-Oliver Frisch)
- September 21, 2010 @ 06:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
Marvel to move to new, 60,000-square-foot offices in October
The Sports Illustrated Building -- Marvel's new home
While many await an announcement expected later today about the possible relocation of DC Comics to Los Angeles, the New York Observer reports that Marvel Entertainment is moving — from 417 Fifth Ave. to 135 W. 50th St.
The publisher will lease 60,000 square feet for nine years in the Sports Illustrated Building, allowing it to consolidate its offices onto one floor. Marvel is expected to take occupancy on Oct. 1.
- September 21, 2010 @ 03:34 AM by Kevin Melrose