2010 October
U2 performs anthem from Spider-Man musical
When Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark star Reeve Carney debuted the song “Boy Falls From the Sky” last month on Good Morning America, it was virtually impossible not to imagine what the anthem might sound like performed by U2. After all, Bono and the Edge wrote that number, as well as the rest of the score, for director Julie Taymor’s $52-million musical — and it has all of the hallmarks of a U2 song (some even compared it to “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me,” the band’s contribution to the Batman Forever soundtrack).
Well, now you no longer have to imagine, as U2 offered its rendition of “Boy Falls From the Sky” on Sunday at a concert in Portugal. And as the audience was filled with cellphone users, multiple videos are available on YouTube.
- October 5, 2010 @ 09:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
NYCC ’10 | Conan the Barbarian’s Manly Man checklist
Conan's Man Checklist
If you’re heading out to the New York Comic Con this weekend, don’t forget your … horse? Dark Horse Comics sent out a “Manly Man” checklist, highlighting tips from Conan the Barbarian on attending the big convention. You can find more manly man tips on the Manny McManly Twitter feed, also run by Dark Horse to promote Conan, Kull and other Robert E. Howard creations they publish.
- October 5, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Marvel
Publishing | Retail news and analysis site ICv2 concludes its two-part interview with Marvel Publisher Dan Buckley, who addresses the struggle between “tightly interwoven continuity” and accessible comics: “… You run the constant battle of people saying ‘we need one-shots for people to jump on to,’ but the ordering trends don’t play to that a lot. The ordering trends play to ‘is this tied to an event.’ It was very evident with DC’s Brightest Day and Darkest Night orders. It was very evident during Civil War. So you hear that said a lot but most of the sales are very contradictory to those desires. Making books as easily entered into as possible is something we try to pay close attention to. I’m not going to deny that we don’t get lost in our own soup sometimes which is the nature of serialized story-telling. It’s hard to keep the revenue numbers without tying in books to leverage off the big books.” [ICv2.com]
- October 5, 2010 @ 08:09 AM by Kevin Melrose
Talking Comics with Tim | Dustin Harbin
Diary Comics 1
Dustin Harbin is a cartoonist who considers his craft and the comics industry from a pragmatic vantage point. I say pragmatic, because, to be perfectly honest, the first few questions I fired at Harbin were skewed a tad negative, completely on my end. I think it’s to his credit that rather than going the easy, negative or defensive routes, he offered nuanced, yet candid responses to my questions. We dispensed with those questions fairly quickly and from there got into the meat of why I wanted to talk to him: his ongoing work as letterer of the relaunched Matt Fraction/Gabriel Ba & company’s Casanova (Icon/Issue 4 set to come out on October 13) as well as his own Diary Comics #1 (Koyama Press) [48 pgs | b&w w/ color covers, endpapers {$6 ($10 w/sketch)}], which premiered at SPX. Harbin describes Diary Comics 1 as “this–THIS!–is your opportunity to splash on in to six months of one dull dude’s life, as originally seen in the daily DHARBIN! diary comic. Covering topics including girls, dharbins, other girls, more dharbins, depressions, some conventions, more depressions, tons more dharbins, AND MUCH MORE!!” On the con front, Harbin will be at APE this month (October 16-17), then BCGF in Brooklyn in December. My thanks to Harbin for indulging my questions.
Tim O’Shea: Is it me, or judging by recent tweets, are you pulling the kid gloves off in terms of your opinions since you are no longer a HeroesCon official?
Dustin Harbin: Haha, well while not being part of the public face of something besides myself DOES free me a little bit opinion-wise, I think I’ve always been fairly vocal about my disgust with some of the crappier blog sites out there. Not working for HeroesCon just means that I don’t have to worry about it reflecting on Shelton Drum. That dude is super-friendly, he would never publicly run something down, he’s too classy, unlike me.
- October 4, 2010 @ 04:00 PM by Tim O'Shea
Preview from upcoming Oni GN ‘Dead Goombas’
Characters from 'Dead Goombas'
Cartoonist Tom Williams let me in on a little secret: his next big project. Coming next year from Oni Press is a new graphic novel titled Dead Goombas. Written by J. Torres, the artist William describes it as a B-movie horror dramedy with the tone of the John Landis’ film Innocent Blood except with zombies.
- October 4, 2010 @ 03:00 PM by Chris Arrant
DC Universe Online delayed until 2011
Black Adam vs. Green Lantern in DC Universe Online
I guess it was too good to be true when Sony finally revealed the release date for the long-anticipated DC Universe Online MMO this past summer, as now the game, which was originally supposed to come out in November, has been delayed until “early 2011.”
Here’s the reasoning, from the press release: “SOE is dedicated to delivering the highest quality game experiences possible,” says John Smedley, President, Sony Online Entertainment. “DC Universe Online is the first game of its kind, and a truly massive undertaking — the first action MMO set in the DC Universe, the first MMO on the PlayStation® 3, and the first time the entire DC Universe will be accessible to the millions of fans who are eagerly anticipating its release. As the game heads into external beta testing, this extra time will allow us to address community feedback in a meaningful way. When we get deeper into external beta, we’ll be able to share more information regarding the new launch date.”
The whole point of a beta test is to help figure out what needs to be fixed before launch, so I guess if this ultimately means the game will be better and more complete when it comes out, so be it. While the delay sucks, they did have a bit of a silver lining, as they announced more info on the external beta:
- October 4, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by JK Parkin
Can you handle C*ckbone?
from Josh Simmons's Cockbone
It was one of the best comics you never read last year. Available only in Robin Bougie’s extreme-smut anthology Sleazy Slice #3 (link is NSFW) or as a minicomic with a wrinkled and grease-stained brown paper bag for a cover and the title hand-scrawled on it in pencil, cartoonist Josh Simmons’s horror opus Cockbone nevertheless came in at #53 on Comic Book Resources’ list of the best comics of 2009. Many critics –Tom Spurgeon, Joe “Jog the Blog” McCulloch, Tucker Stone, yours truly — ranked it even higher. Once read, this story of a simple-minded oaf, the grotesque family that exploits him, and the horrifying fate that awaits them all was simply impossible to shake.
And now — for our sins — Simmons has posted Cockbone online in its entirety. Please note: This is perhaps the most disturbing comic I have ever read, and it’s way, way beyond NOT SAFE FOR WORK. I’m serious — this nightmarish cocktail of sexual violence and depravity will upset you. Badly. But if you think you can take it, you’ll find that it takes the themes and imagery Simmons has been developing in his more accessible horror work — his stories in Mome and Kramers Ergot, his graphic novels House and Jessica Farm — and takes them to a masterful, unforgettable extreme. Just remember: You’ve been warned.
- October 4, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
NYCC ’10 | Watch out for Lego art
Lego fans and comics fans seem to overlap quite a bit in the Venn diagram of life, so it’s not too surprising that Lego artist Nathan Sawaya has chosen to bring his Lego stylings to New York Comic-Con next weekend. From the press release:
Yellow, by Nathan Sawaya
Spanning the floor of the Javits Center, Nathan’s life-size LEGO people tell stories, bring emotion and make people smile.
His most iconic sculpture – Yellow – depicts a man with LEGO cascading out of his open chest cavity and will be on public display for the very first time other than in fine art museums.
Other sculptures will be created live for Comicon attendees.
Sawaya will be at booth 401 if you want to see the magic up close—and it sounds like his sculptures will be hard to avoid. I just hope he has secured them somehow, so con-goers don’t succumb to the temptation to rearrange things a bit.
- October 4, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Themed sketchbooks: Vito Delsante’s Robin
For my final installment in my spotlight of themed sketchbooks, I turn to comics’ most popular sidekick: Robin. Many men (and a couple of women) have stood at Batman’s side as the boy wonder, and since the character’s inception in 1940 he’s carved a mark in fans … especially comics retailer and comics pro Vito Delsante.
“I’m a fan of Robin the Boy Wonder. Any incarnation. So I have folks a million times more talented than I am draw him for me!” says Delsante. He admits to dressing up as the Boy Wonder himself on two occasions for Halloween, for as he puts it “It’s a great character for kids since it’s ultimate wish fulfillment; you can be a kid and still hang out with Batman? Sign me up!”
- October 4, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Chris Arrant
Walking about the comics beat with Heidi MacDonald
If I had to pick one person as the reporter-of-record for the American comics scene, it would be Heidi MacDonald. Although she may not write for Comic Book Resources, Newsarama or Wizard, her compelling voice and expansive knowledge of comics — and virtually all of its players — give her writing for Publishers Weekly and her own site, The Beat, a unique perspective. In addition to her comics commentary, she’s also served as a comics editor herself with stints at Disney, DC/Vertigo and Fox Atomic. This multifaceted experience gives her writing insider knowledge and credibility while lending MacDonald’s colorful wit intact to provide one of the most unique and strongest voices talking about comics.
I quote MacDonald often, many times for her idea of “the satisfying chunk” (ask her!), and with comics in the middle of a unique tectonic shift at the moment in terms of formats, genres and even ownership, I wanted to pick her brain on where things are and where they’re heading. Before I’d probably do this in a hallway to a press room at a convention or over weeks of emailing, but thanks to Robot 6 I can put it down for the world to see.
Chris Arrant: When people off the street ask, what do you tell them you do for a living?
Heidi MacDonald: I usually say I’m a writer, and they always ask what I write, so I say I run a website about comics (or graphic novels, depending on the crowd) and pop culture. They ask what it is called and I say “The Beat — just Google ‘Beat’ and ‘Heidi’ and it will come up.” Over the years the response has generally gotten more positive. Usually someone has a cousin or neighbor who is involved in comics. About half the time I have some familiarity with whoever it is, as opposed to the Olden Days when people were more aghast at the notion of comic books as a whole.
- October 4, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Chris Arrant
It’s a Lackluster World after all
In comics there are all sorts of worlds: superhero worlds, fantasy worlds, futuristic worlds, real worlds and alot more. But in the independent comic series Lackluster World, he takes on our world but with a sense of humor that’s biting without leaving a mark. The series’ creator Eric Adams describes the series as “a dark satire comic about an albino man using vandalism and his job as a newspaper journalist to change the world at large before it changes him.” Think of it as Transmetropolitan meets Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.
It’s penultimate issue came out earlier this year, with the trio of leads Fahrenheit, Celsius & Kelvin (named after the temperature scales) are pulled into a new dynamic with the black sheep Fahrenheit being pulled back into support his younger sister who’s big brother Kelvin is institutionalized for his over-zealous religiousity. While the family drama unfolds, Fahrenheit is also dealing with the fallout from the success of his political-diatribe-as-newspaper hits a chord with citizens.
Here’s six pages from Lackluster World #6:
Adams is working on the series final issue, Lackluster World #7, now. Adams has also provided a PDF of the full first issue for Robot 6 readers. Make with the clicky.
- October 4, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Chris Arrant
Kodansha to take over Del Rey manga (Updated)
Last week, we noted that a number of Del Rey series had mysteriously disappeared from Previews and Amazon, and in the comments, we speculated that an announcement may be in the works.
We were right! On the eve of New York Comic-Con/New York Anime Fest, Kodansha and Random House (the parent company of Del Rey) have announced a major change: The Del Rey imprint will disappear as a separate entity, and Kodansha will publish its own books in the U.S., rather than licensing them. Random House stays in the picture, though, providing distribution and support through their Random House Publisher Services division. Longtime Del Rey editor Dallas Middaugh will transfer to that division.
UPDATE: PW has more, including the news that Random House will still be doing a lot of the editing and production work on the books. No word yet about the rest of the Del Rey staff, though. And it looks like Del Rey may survive as an imprint for non-manga graphic novels.
Full press release after the jump.
- October 4, 2010 @ 08:30 AM by Brigid Alverson
Women artists: We’ve got our own club, thanks!
A sketch by Joelle Jones
The headline of this story on the OC Weekly blog gets it all wrong: Women comics creators aren’t breaking into the boys’ club, they are making a club of their own. Several, actually.
Props to Joe Vince for taking the time to highlight six female comics creators (with another batch coming next week). And all are standouts: Julia Wertz, Kate Beaton, Amy Reeder Hadley, Julia Gfrörer, Jöelle Jones, and G. Willow Wilson. But only two of them are in the boys’ club (by which I assume Vince means traditional superhero comics). Wertz, Beaton, Gfrörer, and Jones, are making different kinds of comics, comics that didn’t exist back in the Silver Age and aren’t dragging a load of sexist baggage with them. The space in which Wertz is working is hardly a boys’ club, and I’d say Kate Beaton has the historical-satire niche pretty much to herself.
This is not to say that there aren’t areas of comics that are actively hostile to women. There’s always room for improvement. But it seems like a lot of women have simply ignored the traditional definitions and categories and found ways to make their own comics.
- October 4, 2010 @ 08:07 AM by Brigid Alverson
DC Entertainment shake-up leads to executive departures
DC Comics
Three top executives are leaving DC Entertainment as part of the company’s massive restructuring, according to multiple reports: Senior Vice President & Creative Director Richard Bruning, Senior Vice President-Marketing and Sales Steve Rotterdam, and Senior Vice President-Brand Management Cheryl Rubin.
The news was first reported on Friday in a since-removed post at The Beat, and then on Sunday by Bleeding Cool before being confirmed this morning by Deadline. It’s unclear whether the executives were laid off or turned down relocation offers.
The three departures follow that of Senior Vice President-Creative Affairs Gregory Noveck in August. In addition, longtime DC employee Patrick Caldon, who was promoted in February to executive vice president-finance and administration — part of the five-person executive team — reportedly will retire. That may explain why his name has been absent from the latest press releases.
Announced on Sept. 21, the reorganization leaves DC’s comics-publishing division in New York City while moving the company’s administrative/business and digital and multimedia operations — including, presumably, the WildStorm offices now based in La Jolla, Calif. — to a Warner Bros.-managed property in Burbank, Calif. As many as 80 of DC’s estimated 250 employees are expected to be fired or relocated.
- October 4, 2010 @ 06:04 AM by Kevin Melrose
What Are You Reading?
Welcome to What Are You Reading?, the weekly feature in which your Robot 6 crew shares what’s on our reading pile this week. Our guest this week is Robin Brenner, who is the Teen Librarian at the Brookline Public Library in Brookline, Massachusetts. She chaired the ALA/YALSA Great Graphic Novels for Teens Committee, was a judge for the 2007 Eisner Awards, and blogs at School Library Journal’s Good Comics for Kids blog and at EarlyWord. Her guide Understanding Manga and Anime was nominated for a 2008 Eisner Award.
As always, feel free to play along in the comments section!
- October 3, 2010 @ 02:55 PM by Brigid Alverson