2010 December
Comics A.M. | Tokyo ‘anti-loli’ bill advances, feds change stance on glasses
Lolicon
Legal | The general affairs committee of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly has approved the government’s revised amendment to the Youth Healthy Development Ordinance, clearing the way for a vote by the full assembly on Wednesday. The controversial bill would further restrict sexual content in manga, anime and video games. A breakdown of the legislation can be found here. The Mainichi Daily News provides commentary. [Anime News Network]
Legal | In a surprise move, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has decided that the DC superhero- and Wizard of Oz-themed drinking glasses recalled last month because of high lead content aren’t children’s products and, therefore, not subject to recall. [The Associated Press]
Passings | Bluegrass musician and comic-art collector Don Lineberger, 71, died Dec. 5 after being pulled from a house fire in Valdosta, Georgia. Smoke inhalation is believed to be the cause of death. A banjo player who performed with the likes of Bill Monroe, Glen Campbell and Steve Martin, Lineberger was also known for his extensive collection of EC Comics memorabilia. Posters in this thread at the Collectors Society message board are attempting to compile a list of original EC work likely lost in the fire. [The Valdosta Daily Times]
- December 13, 2010 @ 09:04 AM by Kevin Melrose
Clive Barker and BOOM! to raise Hell in March
Hellraiser #1 cover by Nick Percival
BOOM! Studios announced this morning that they’ve picked up the license to make comics based on horror writer Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. The new ongoing series will be co-written by Barker and Christopher Monfette and drawn by Leonardo Manco of Hellblazer fame.
In addition, they also plan to release Hellraiser: Masterworks Vol. 1, which will reprint stories from the Hellraiser anthology published under Marvel’s Epic banner. The first volume will include stories by Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Mike Mignola and Alex Ross, among others.
The complete press release can be fund after the jump.
- December 13, 2010 @ 07:30 AM by JK Parkin
Kodansha announces first manga lineup
Mardock Scramble
Kodansha Comics announced its first season’s offerings yesterday, and it looks like the lineup is a mix of old and new, including several series that have already been published in the U.S. by other publishers. The good news for many fans is that most of the manga published by Del Rey, which Kodansha is more or less taking over, will continue under the new imprint.
The new titles are
- Monster Hunter Orage, by Fairy Tail creator Hiro Mashima
- Deltora Quest, the anime version of which is currently playing on The Hub
- The Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
- Mardock Scramble, a sci-fi manga that is also an anime
- Animal Land, by Zatch Bell creator Makoto Raiku, which “tells the hilarious and heartwarming story of a baby raised by animals”
- Bloody Monday, a thriller about a computer hacker racing to stop a terrorist plot
- Cage of Eden, which they describe as “Battle Royale meets Lost by way of Negima!”
- A new Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney manga series
In addition, they will be reviving Gon, the wordless dinosaur manga, which was originally published by CMX, and Until the Full Moon, by Fake creator Sanami Matoh, which was originally published by Broccoli.
- December 13, 2010 @ 07:03 AM by Brigid Alverson
What Are You Reading?
Uncanny X-Force #1
Welcome to What Are You Reading?, our weekly look at what the Robot 6 crew has been enjoying on the comics front. Today our special guest is our friend Ron Richards, one of the co-founders of the popular comics website iFanboy.com. To see what Ron and the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below.
- December 12, 2010 @ 01:14 PM by JK Parkin
Trailers for Batman: Arkham City, Thor: God of Thunder debut on Spike
Several new trailers for video games debuted during the Spike Video Game Awards last night, including Batman: Arkham City (above) and Thor: God of Thunder. The Batman one in particular is interesting, as it reveals not only the villainous Hugo Strange, but also a piece of knowledge that he has about the Caped Crusader. Maybe he went to the Batman Inc. press conference and put two and two together.
In terms of last night’s winners, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game took the best adapted video game category, beating out Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and games featuring Harry Potter, Star Wars and Transformers. But Spider-Man didn’t go home empty-handed, as the voice talents of awards host Neil Patrick Harris won best performance by a human male for his work in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. You can find the list of winners on Spike’s VGA site.
- December 12, 2010 @ 09:08 AM by JK Parkin
‘Love and Rocktober’ wraps up
Love and Rockets New Stories #1
If you’ve been following What Are You Reading? or Sean T. Collins’ blog since October, you know he’s been conducting “Love and Rocktober,” which was “a marathon examination of the entirety of Love and Rockets by Gilbert Hernandez and Jaime Hernandez.” Rocktober is finally over, and Sean has posted an index of all his reviews and analysis of the works of Los Bros Hernandez. If you’re a fan of the Hernandez Bros. or have been curious about their work since reading Chris Mautner’s Comic College on them last year, go check it out.
- December 11, 2010 @ 01:12 PM by JK Parkin
Kodansha Comics to launch on Sunday
The long-awaited launch of Kodansha Comics will take place this Sunday, Dec. 12, in the Bryant Park branch of the Kinokuniya Bookstore in New York City, and will include the announcement of their summer schedule. Kodansha has a Facebook page up for the event. The official launch is at 2 p.m., but the action starts at 1 with a One Piece podcast panel and continues afterward with a talk by Mari Marimoto, the translator of Osamu Tezuka’s Ayako as well as the super-popular Naruto, and various other events. Tony Yao of Manga Therapy will host the event.
Kodansha, the largest publisher in Japan, announced two years ago that they were going to publish their manga in the U.S. under their own name, but only a handful of books have appeared so far. In recent years, Del Rey, a branch of Random House, had licensed most Kodansha manga. In October, Kodansha announced that it would take over the Del Rey series and publish them directly, rather than licensing them to Random House. Random House will supply editing, production and distribution for the new books.
- December 11, 2010 @ 05:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
The Fifth Color | A New Hope
Oh Thank Heavens the Raccoon is here!
I knew it. I saw @Marvel post a tweet last night, and I just knew it was going to be good. I left milk and cookies out for my comic news Santa and OH BOY IT’S CHRISTMAS MORNING COME EARLY!
Just scroll down and take a look at Kevin’s sexy post about the most awesome of news coming down the wire from Marvel as Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning continue to look to the skies and dream of greatness.
From the press release:
Editor Bill Rosemann added “Take the assembled majesty of Marvel’s most powerful heroes, add on the cult-fave duo of Rocket Raccoon and Groot, pile on a ridiculous amount of writing and artistic talent, and top it all off with cool covers by Alex Garner and the one and only Mike Mignola. That, True Believers, is a recipe for face-melting, brain-frying, pedal-to-the-metal, that’s-why-I-read-comics awesomeness.
Hell yeah.
Since 2006, Marvel’s cosmic adventures have been turned upside down, starting with the very first Annihilation event, orchestrated by Keith Giffen. The threats were galactic in nature, the heroes small and powerful against the forces of true evil. While Civil War brought life-changing political stories to the Marvel Comics page, Annihilation brought back the wider-scope, cast-of-thousands style storytelling that made things like Secret Wars and the Infinity Gauntlet part of a True Believer’s vocabulary. From the first Annihilation came Annihilation: Conquest and the same life-and-death symphony was played for our enjoyment. Civilizations crumbled, characters struggled with new responsibilities and the weight of the galaxy came down on some very unusual shoulders. While they might have doubted themselves, and wrestled with the infectious Phalanx and the unbeatable Ultron to the point of personal destruction, the reader can’t doubt these characters and these stories. They paid off once before and they did so again, promising a new era of cosmic heroes in the form of the new Guardians of the Galaxy.
I was so sold on those books by the time they were solicited. The Guardians of the Galaxy weave in a lot of amazing elements with great space adventure, and I now care more about a giant sentient space tree than I do about a lot of X-Men. Abnett, Lanning and Giffen took two years and created a universe to explore, and I felt confident signing up for anything and everything they did.
Then came the War of Kings.
- December 10, 2010 @ 03:00 PM by Carla Hoffman
Talking Comics with Tim | John Rogers on Leverage
TNT's Leverage
This Sunday, December 12, TNT is giving Leverage fans a holiday treat of new Season 3 episodes. First up is The Ho Ho Ho Job (the December 12 episode, which TNT previewed with this clip, is set to air at 9 PM EST ), followed by the two-hour season finale on December 19. Given that neither myself nor Graeme make it a secret how much we enjoy the show, series co-creator John Rogers was more than happy to answer my questions in a recent email exchange. While I had his attention, we also touched upon his Dungeons & Dragons work for IDW (the column is supposed to be about talking comics at some point, of course [also be sure to check out CBR's late October 2010 John Rogers interview where he discussed the ongoing comic in greater detail]). One final thing, if you are not a frequent visitor to Rogers’ blog, Kung Fu Monkey, you should be. The man finds a way to make his show’s hate mail worthwhile reading. As for the upcoming episodes, I was hooked at the name Dave Foley.
Tim O’Shea: In this latest batch of new episodes, who of the core cast do we get to delve deeper into their back stories?
John Rogers: We’ve implied for a long time that Christian Kane’s character, Eliot Spencer, did violence professionally for a long time. We get to see him work with his usual moral restraints off … In the second half of the season finale, it’s very Sophie-centric. Not so much her backstory but just a nice bit on her evolution as a character.
- December 10, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by Tim O'Shea
Read The Adventures of Jimmy Halpert from NBC’s The Office
From "The Adventures of Jimmy Halpert"
Perhaps the most poignant moment in last night’s Christmas episode of The Office came when an insecure Pam (Jenna Fischer) finally presented husband Jim (John Krasinski) with The Adventures of Jimmy Halpert, the comic she created for him. While the audience could only catch brief glimpses of the book as Pam showed it to her unsupportive co-workers, NBC has now made the first three pages available online.
- December 10, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Conan O’Brien and Bruce Timm debut The Flaming C
On last night’s show, talk show host Conan O’Brien visited his neighbors at Warner Bros. Animation and chatted with Creative Director Peter Girardi about various DC Comics characters, including “cowboy dandy” Bat Lash, Ultra the Multi-Alien and Captain Boomerang. He then worked with legendary animator Bruce Timm to create his own alter ego, The Flaming C. Check it out below:
- December 10, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
A sneak peek at Drawn & Quarterly’s spring line-up
Excerpt from 'Paying for It'
With the end of the year approaching, book publishers are sending out their preview catalogs to book buyers and the media. One of those publishers, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, just happens to represent the Canadian comics company Drawn & Quarterly, which means we can get a sneak peek of sorts at their plans for the spring and summer months. Most of these titles won’t be too surprising to those who follow the company’s output, but there are a few books of note that readers may not be expecting. Click on the link to find out what they are.
- December 10, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Kanye West vs. the World?
Well, I’m sure that’s how he felt after the Taylor Swift incident. But I’m not talking about Yeezy’s mental state, I’m talking about this illustration for the Chicago paper Redeye‘s “Pop Person of the Year” feature, which gives rapper/producer/outrage magnet Kanye West the Scott Pilgrim treatment. “This is both an honor and an outrage,” writesScott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley, who is not the illustration’s artist, “but as you know i love kanye AND chitown so ima let this one slide.” “Let’s have a toast for the douchebags” indeed!
- December 10, 2010 @ 10:15 AM by Sean T. Collins
Abnett and Lanning to assemble Marvel’s Annihilators in March [Updated]
Annihilators #1
In the wake of The Thanos Imperative, Marvel will launch Annihilators, a four-issue limited series that teams writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning with artists Tan Eng Huat and Timothy Green III.
Debuting in March, Annihilators brings together the Silver Surfer, Beta-Ray Bill, Quasar, Gladiator and Ronan the Accuser — the so-called “Cosmic Avengers” — as they attempt to “fill the void left by the loss of Nova and the Guardians of the Galaxy.” The miniseries is being billed as an ideal jumping-on point for readers unfamiliar with Marvel’s recent cosmic titles.
“We picked the top flight, first class heroes,” Lanning tells Marvel.com. “The wish list; the A-grade, to contrast with the mavericks and misfits of [Guardians of the Galaxy]. This is the anti-Guardians, though their primary role is the same, and they’re essentially the Guardians’ legacy.”
Each double-sized issue will feature a full-length lead story by Abnett, Lanning and Huat, plus a back-up story by DnA and Green: the Rocket Raccoon and Groot adventure that was announced in July at Comic-Con International as a separate four-issue miniseries.
Update: Read the official press release after the break:
- December 10, 2010 @ 09:31 AM by Kevin Melrose
Space out with Lane Milburn’s Twelve Gems
from Twelve Gems by Lane Milburn
It’s ’80s-indie black-and-white space-opera action as you like it! Presenting Twelve Gems, a graphic novel in the making by cartoonist Lane Milburn of Baltimore’s Closed Caption Comics collective. Milburn, a recipient of the Xeric Grant for his self-published action-horror collection Death Trap. calls it “a comedic sci-fi space epic starring three heroic characters enlisted to travel the galaxy in search of twelve magical gems.” Judging from the very impressive preview pages — filled with Heavy Metal hotness and crosshatched and black-spotted to within an inch of their lives — Milburn’s really going for the gusto here. Closed Caption Comics is best known for genre-influenced artcomics in the Fort Thunder/Paper Rodeo mode, but Twelve Gems seems to me to have more in common with the giddy throwback style of Benjamin Marra. I can’t wait to see more.
- December 10, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Sean T. Collins