2010 September
New Brighton Archeological Society goes online
Mark Andrew Smith and Matthew Weldon are putting the first volume of The New Brighton Archeological Society, The Castle of Galomar, online. A fantasy story that neatly spans the territory between straightforward (and clean!) enough for tweens and elegant (and clever!) enough for adults, The Castle of Galomar came out in 2009 and was nominated for two Harvey awards.
This is just the start—Smith, who is also known for his work on The Amazing Joy Buzzards, plans to put some of his other work on the site, including a new graphic novel, Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors, which will launch in a few weeks. I grabbed the opportunity to ask him a couple of quick questions, the foremost being why anyone in their right mind would put a Harvey-nominated book online for free. Read on for all the answers, plus a second sample of art from book two.
- September 16, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Warren Ellis has a thought …
When creators who matter to me start really thinking about the in-app or cliented digital comics form of Comixology or graphic.ly, and start doing, say, 10 or 12 page comics (with whatever notational stuff shoved in the back that they feel like adding) and releasing them for 99 US cents every two weeks or so, I’m going to get interested really fast. And so will you. Particularly when these services perfect series-specific subscriptions that sideload the books automagically into your client locker or push an alert to your device.
I like this because it’s an attempt to treat digital comics as actual digital comics, rather than print comics rendered in another format. Ten or twelve pages is about what I’m comfortable reading digitally, and an issue every week or two would be great. Then it becomes part of my regular routine.
The problem with long-form webcomics, even ones that update three or five times a week, is that it’s hard to read a continuing story one page at a time. But a chapter at a time works pretty well, and having it automatically appear, without my having to remember to get it, would definitely get me hooked.
- September 16, 2010 @ 08:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
An animated Neil Gaiman to guest star on Arthur
An animated Neil Gaiman on "Arthur"
Neil Gaiman’s book tour will swing through Elwood City on Oct. 25 as the award-winning comics writer and novelist gets animated for an episode of the educational television series Arthur.
Produced by WGBH Boston and the Cookie Jar Group, the cartoon adaptation of Marc Brown’s children’s books centers on Arthur Read, an 8-year-old anthropomorphic aardvark, and his friends and family.
Gaiman will appear in an episode called “Falafelosophy,” in which he inspires one of Arthur’s friends who’s trying to make a graphic novel. According to Wired.com’s GeekDad, it’s paired with related story, “Tales of the Grotesquely Grim Bunny,” about changes on the shelves at the Elwood City comic store.
Arthur kicks off its 14th season on Oct. 1.
- September 16, 2010 @ 07:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Six Flags Great Adventure to open Green Lantern roller-coaster
Green Lantern
Six Flags Great Adventure announced this morning it will debut a 15-story Green Lantern roller-coaster in spring 2011, just ahead of the Warner Bros. movie.
The Jackson, New Jersey, theme park describes the stand-up coaster as 154-feet tall with “over three quarters of a mile of twisting green steel,” and capable of reaching speeds of 63 miles per hour.
“Unlike traditional seated coasters,” the press release states,” Green Lantern is designed to allow passengers to stand erect throughout the entire course of the ride that delivers an experience unlike any other. The two minute and thirty second thrill begins with a pulse-quickening 45-degree vertical drop before rocketing riders through five inversions — including a 121-foot-tall loop, a 103-foot dive loop and a 72-foot inclined loop, climaxing in twisted double corkscrews.”
Six Flags Great Adventure is also home to such DC Comics-based thrill rides as Batman the Ride, Superman: Ultimate Flight, Bizarro and The Dark Knight Coaster.
- September 16, 2010 @ 06:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs | On the Case with Holmes and Watson
Sherlock Holmes and a Scandal in Bohemia
We’ve been talking about comics for kids a lot lately in this column. I want to continue that conversation this week, but from a different angle. Let’s face it, we’ll never all agree about whether Marvel and DC superhero comics should be focused primarily on children or grown ups or if both, in what ratio. A lot of things complicate that discussion, including the origin of superheroes as children’s literature and the varying levels of nostalgia that grown-up fans attach to that.
But what if we flip that coin over? What if we take something with origins in grown-up literature and make it for kids? Does that change the arguments? Do characters created for one demographic always have to be written with that demographic in mind? I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s true for superheroes and I don’t think it’s true for Sherlock Holmes who’s the focus of Graphic Universe’s new series On the Case with Holmes and Watson.
To be sure, Sherlock Holmes isn’t the most dramatic example of a “mature audiences” character being used for a kids’ series. He’s not exactly Ripley from Alien or Ash from Evil Dead. But he’s also not standard reading for 4th to 6th graders, the target audience for the On the Case series. And if Holmes can be rewritten for 9-year-olds, why can’t Superman be rewritten for 39-year-olds? The question shouldn’t be whether or not it can be done though. I predict that we’ll read few if any comments advocating that Holmes is a grown-up character and that he shouldn’t be adapted for children. What we need to be figuring out is how to tell the story so well that neither group feels unwanted.
- September 15, 2010 @ 03:45 PM by Michael May
Send Us Your Shelf Porn!
Welcome once again to Send Us Your Shelf Porn!, where we ask fans to show us their collections. Today’s shelves come from Gregory T. Roden.
Which leads me to my next point — we need more Shelf Porn! Please send me your write-up and pictures at jkparkin@yahoo.com if you’re interested in sharing your shelves with our readers.
Now let’s hear from Gregory …
- September 15, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by JK Parkin
The Guild returns to comics in December with a series of one-shots
Guild cover by Darick Robertson
Following the miniseries from earlier this year, Felicia Day and Dark Horse are teaming up for five one-shots starring the various characters featured in her web series The Guild.
The first one, starring Vork, promises to delve into the man behind the rule book.” It’s written by Day and Jeff Lewis, who plays Vork in the series. Richard Clark and Dave Stewart provide the interior art, while Darick Robertson (above) and Gilbert Hernandez (check after the jump!) provide the covers.
The Vork one-shot comes out in December, the same month the collection of the miniseries arrives.
- September 15, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by JK Parkin
Government-issued comics fail to convince skeptical youth
Government-issued comix
The government of South Korea has a wee problem: Nobody believes them any more, at least when it comes to their account of the sinking of a patrol boat last March. According to polls, over half of South Koreans in their 20s don’t buy the official explanation that the boat was sunk by a North Korean torpedo. So what’s a beleaguered government to do?
Make some comics! As Bloomberg News reports, the government of Lee Myung Bak has released a 32-page comic about the incident, featuring a journalist who is investigating the story and discussing it with his fiancee. Here’s some sample dialogue:
“When it comes to security issues, I wish that all people would speak with one voice,” says a survivor of the sinking depicted in the comic strip. “The people should love and trust us in the military.”
As that sparkling bit of dialogue indicates, this comic is about as well done as most government propaganda comics, and it’s about as well received, too: Rather than stirring up support for the government, the comic appears to be resurrecting memories of the not-so-distant past, when South Korea was a military dictatorship and such propaganda was the norm.
- September 15, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Batman heads to the Far East in Batman Inc. #2
Batman Inc. #2
DC Comics revealed today the cover to the second issue of Batman Inc., the new Grant Morrison-written title featuring Bruce Wayne recruiting various Batmen around the world. The cover, by interior artist Yanick Paquette, suggest the Dark Knight will head to Asia for his recruitment campaign. The second issue of Batman Inc. arrives in December.
- September 15, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by JK Parkin
Debunked! Comics editors not on Nazi death list
Wartime propaganda from the Beano
Today is Battle of Britain Day, and the British blog Bear Alley takes the opportunity to investigate a bizarre bit of popular knowledge: That the editors of the kiddie comics Beano and Dandy were on the Nazis’ death list.
Beano and Dandy traffic in broad, slapstick humor, usually involving pies in the face, broken windows, and the eternal cycle of bullying and revenge. Most stories ended with someone getting whacked with a slipper, apparently the traditional means of restoring authority in postwar Britain. But according to local lore, in the late 1930s (Dandy was founded in 1937, Beano in 1938), many of the jokes came at the expense of Hitler and Mussolini. Aware of comics’ ability to lead youth astray, the Nazis put the editors of both comics on their list of people to be dealt with once they had successfully invaded Britain.
There is actually such a list—the Sonderfahndungsliste G.B.—and anyone can read it, as London’s Imperial War Museum printed a facsimile in 1989, but apparently nobody bothered to until Bear Alley’s Steve Holland took the initiative. His finding: Although a number of newspaper editors appear on the list, along with playwright Noel Coward and novelist H.G. Wells, the Beano and Dandy editors, George Moonie and Albert Barnes, are nowhere to be found. The sole cartoonist on the list is David Low, the political cartoonist for the Evening Standard, who, not surprisingly, had been churning out anti-Nazi cartoons by the barrel. He was slated to be handed over to the Gestapo, but history dictated otherwise.
It’s not surprising that the British found this story credible, as both comics are beloved institutions over there, and the British themselves recognized the power of popular culture after the war by hanging Lord Haw-Haw, an American-born broadcaster who made Nazi propaganda broadcasts on German radio, for treason.
(Image from the pop culture blog The Daily Hitler.)
- September 15, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Man, that was over fast: My SPX 2010 report
Get in line for cool comics
As is my wont, I made the one-day (the one day being Saturday) trek to Bethesda, Md., along with Joe “Jog” McCulloch for the annual Small Press Expo. Perhaps the Earth’s rotation is spinning ever faster, but this year’s show seemed a bit of a blur to me, even by previous years’ standards. Before I had a chance to say “Sorry, I’m tapped out and can’t buy your mini-comic,” it was after 6 p.m. and time to go home. Fortunately I took some pictures to help my fading memory keep the show alive in my tumescent brain. Or at least, I tried to take some pictures.
- September 15, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Ted Naifeh’s sketches: Fun with Batman
Ted Naifeh's Batman and Robin
Every now and then, Ted Naifeh gets the urge to draw some Batman. He just posted five sketches on his blog, ranging from the beautifully detailed drawing above (the sphinx is based on the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco) to a jaunty manga-esque ink sketch of Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson.
- September 15, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Brightest Day #7
Publishing | Chart-watcher John Jackson Miller wades into the grim direct-market sales figures for August, and notes that they mirror the state of the market in 2000: “Like 2010, 2000 was a year with a successful super-hero movie release — the first X-Men film. In that year, however, it had little impact on the market partially due to the cash-poor position of retailers at the time — and we might expect retailers were in the same position this year. [...] In 2000, by contrast, the reason wasn’t the general economy, but rather the seven-year industry recession that preceded it. Another similar element: price increases. From 1999 to 2000, Marvel went from benchmarks of $1.99 and $2.50 to $2.50 and $2.99. Other titles increased as well; $2.95 first became the industry’s median price in late 1999. The 2000 jumps are one of the more drastic previous increases by percentage — eclipsed, of course, by the current $2.99-to-$3.99 move.” [The Comichron]
Legal | India’s Delhi High Court has refused to hear a complaint by Archie Comics challenging the use of the name “Archies” by Mumbai-based Purple Creations. The court said it had no jurisdiction in the matter because Archie doesn’t have an office in India. [Deccan Herald]
- September 15, 2010 @ 08:03 AM by Kevin Melrose
Japanese company stops American scanlators
See You in the School of the Muse, one of several Libre titles available in Japanese on the Kindle
Several scanlation groups are reporting that they have received cease and desist notices from the Japanese publisher Libre, which specializes in yaoi manga. Baka-Updates reports that the scanlation groups Attractive Fascinante, Bliss, and Liquid Passion & Biblo Eros all received C&D notices, and the latter two have taken down or removed links to content owned by Libre. It looks like Blissful Sin has received a notice and complied as well.
On the one hand, it’s a little surprising that Libre is targeting these groups, as they seem to only scan manga that hasn’t been licensed in the US, and the audience for yaoi is relatively small anyway. On the other hand, Libre has been pretty aggressive in asserting its rights. The company was formed following the 2006 bankruptcy of another yaoi publisher, Biblos and picked up the rights to the magazine Be x Boy and the work of several creators. The American publisher Central Park Media was publishing series by these creators, but Libre accused them publicly of violating their IP rights. At the time, Ed Chavez (now the marketing director for Vertical, Inc., but at the time simply a blogger with an encyclopedic knowledge of the Japanese manga scene) commented on how unusual it was for a Japanese publisher to call out an American licensee, in English, no less. CPM disagreed but ultimately filed for bankruptcy, making the whole thing moot.
And now we get to the heart of the matter: Libre is publishing yaoi for the Kindle, under the aegis of parent company Animate, so they are obviously protecting their market. Animate publishes four titles a month in English, but they also occasionally put up a book in Japanese as well. Although most serious scanlators take down their scanlations of books as soon as they are licensed, there may be less lag time in this case. Or maybe they are just being aggressive; Libre is a member of the anti-scanlation coalition formed earlier this year.
The general reaction seem to have been pretty mature—the readers realize that scanlations are illegal, and they are resigned to it. Unlike Onemanga.com fans, they aren’t demanding that someone set up a new free manga site for them or that manga publishers just “learn to deal with it” and let the scanlators continue, although one reader did pen an embittered open letter to Libre on her LJ, in which she forcefully makes the point that she buys lots of yaoi, some of it directly from Libre—and details the order she just canceled. It’s an interesting twist on the voting-with-your-dollars argument, but one that most of us can’t pull off as we don’t buy Japanese manga to begin with.
(First spotted via Cait Branford on Twitter.)
- September 14, 2010 @ 07:11 PM by Brigid Alverson
Daredevil to become Black Panther: The Man Without Fear
Black Panther "Man Without Fear" teaser
The answer to who will be the new Man Without Fear was answered this afternoon on G4′s Attack of the Show: “Fresh Ink” host Blair Butler announced that Marvel’s Daredevil will end in November with Issue 512 — of course, we already knew that — to be replaced with Black Panther: The Man Without Fear.
The title, which picks up in December with Issue 513, spins out of the “Shadowland” event, and finds Black Panther as the new guardian of Hell’s Kitchen, “living outside of his kingdom and rebuilding his life” without the aid of advanced Wakandan technology.
Black Panther is written by award-winning novelist David Liss, who penned last year’s Daring Mystery Comics 70th Anniversary Special for Marvel, and penciled by Francesco Francavilla (Zorro), who drew those “Man Without Fear” teasers.
Daredevil returned to its original numbering a year ago with Issue 500. The continuation of that numbering under the new name, a la Incredible Hercules, suggests we’ll see a return to plain ol’ Daredevil before too long. Meanwhile, the four-issue Daredevil: Reborn, by Andy Diggle and Davide Gianfelice, will launch in January.
- September 14, 2010 @ 04:47 PM by Kevin Melrose