2011 January
Talking Comics with Tim | Joe Henderson on White Collar
White Collar
Back when the mid-season finale of White Collar was about to air, I lucked out and got a chance to email interview Joe Henderson, the show’s executive story editor. The Q&A was fairy well-received, so when I realized that the show’s midseason (aka Season 2.5) premiere was set to air this Tuesday, January 18 (at its new time of 10 PM EST on USA Network), Henderson and I found time to exchange info again. While last time we delved a smidge into comics, this interview is completely about White Collar. What makes this interview even more pertinent, the midseason premiere episode (Burke’s Seven) is written by Henderson.
Tim O’Shea: How long have you been itching to write an episode with the great homage-tinged title of Burke’s Seven?
Joe Henderson: This is something we’ve been wanting to do for awhile—the entire team working together in a con. But it was also something we really wanted to earn. Let the audience get to know the characters, build up an anticipation to see them all together, then find that moment where the stakes were high enough to justify it. With Mozzie getting shot, it became the perfect opportunity to bring everyone together.
- January 17, 2011 @ 03:30 PM by Tim O'Shea
A look at Brecht Evens’ Night Animals
Do you like comics with gorgeous colors, hot sex scenes, and all-too-relatable scenes in which twenty-something urbanites go to crazy nightclubs and lousy parties? Then Belgian cartoonist Brecht Evens’ The Wrong Place may be right book for you. The Drawn & Quarterly release took a lot of readers and critics by storm at the tail end of 2010 with both its incisive writing and innovative use of color as a storytelling mechanism. (You can read my interview with Evens about the book by clicking this link.)
In just a couple months, Evens will be back with a book about a very different kind of night life. Slated for a March release from Top Shelf, Night Animals — an earlier work than The Wrong Place — was described to me by Evens as a walk on the Where the Wild Things Are side. It contains two wordless tales about seemingly normal people who get caught up in a world of wild wonder (and, perhaps, danger) among the creatures beyond the city limits. While the drawing style is more traditional than The Wrong Place‘s all-watercolors approach, it’s just as lush and inviting, and the color washes are just as vibrant and emotionally freighted. Meanwhile, the stories themselves show that Evens is just as adept at fairy tales and fables as he is at lousy parties and awesome one-night stands. Good stuff.
And courtesy of Leigh Walton and the fine folks at Top Shelf, here’s an eight-page preview of the book. Unleash the animal within, folks!
- January 17, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
How Sally Bloodbath learned to stop worrying and love Nirvana
In dreams, anyway. Over at the music site If You Make It, cartoonist Sally Madden (aka Sally Bloodbath) has a new comic called “Grandma Take Me Home” (hooray for “Sliver”!) about her lifelong dislike for seminal ’90s alt-rock titans Nirvana. Things come to a head when friends whose taste she normally trusts get fed up with her hatin’ and force a Nirvana mixtape on her, at which point visions of Kurt Cobain dance through her head. It’s nice when comics have a strong moral lesson to impart, and the lesson here is that Nirvana were in fact an incredible band. At least that’s what I got from it. What about you?
- January 17, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
100 Bullets team trades in guns for — spaceguns!
On Vertigo’s Graphic Content blog, the publisher revealed a pseudo-conversation between editor Will Dennis and writer Brian Azzarello concerning a new series. Done in a sort of Laurel & Hardy-style, it’s a non-plussed official introduction to the new miniseries from Azzarello and 100 Bullets collaborator Eduardo Risso.
AZZ: I got an idea for a new series.
ME: What’s it called?
AZZ: SPACEMAN.
ME: SPACEMAN? Is that one word or two?
AZZ: It’s one. Like SUPERMAN.
ME: It’s like SUPERMAN?
AZZ: No! It’s like SUPERMAN but not like SUPERMAN.
ME: So what’s it about.
AZZ: A spaceman. What the hell else would it be about?
ME: Right. And it’s with the entire 100 BULLETS team?
Azz: That’s the plan.
ME: Cool. Can we get it out in 2011?
AZZ: Why the hell not?
ME: Book it.
Azzarello revealed in October at Argentina’s Crack Bang Boom Con that Spaceman will be a nine-issue miniseries that fits into the speculative fiction category. In addition to Azzarello and Risso, the comic will include their other 100 Bullets collaborators, cover artist Dave Johnson and colorist Trish Mulvihill.
- January 17, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by Chris Arrant
Compare and contrast: Sean McKeever on editorial mandates
J.L. Bell, who knows a lot more about this topic than me, has a great post about Sean McKeever’s varying accounts of writing DC’s Teen Titans. McKeever was responsible for scripting the comic, but the plot was dictated by editors, who have control over continuity. Here’s McKeever talking to Newsarama about writing Teen Titans in 2008, when he was still on the title:
I know people throw around the term “editorial mandate” like it’s some great horror, but I was actually really grateful for everything they had in place for me. Titans [of] Tomorrow was a story that I really wanted to revisit, and it was also really nice to have a premise thrown at me that I could dive into, so that while I was working on that, I could think a little more on my long-term plans for the book.
Here’s McKeever talking to Titans Tower earlier this month, after leaving DC for Marvel, about co-writing the Deathtrap crossover with Marv Wolfman following Judd Winick’s departure from the companion Titans series:
- January 17, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | Borders sets Feb. 1 deadline; will bande dessinée break out?
Borders
Retailing | The Borders death watch continues, with the struggling bookstore chain giving publishers until Feb. 1 to accept or reject a proposal to convert delayed payments into loans. Publishers reportedly are skeptical of the plan, which would see them take up one-third to one-quarter of the bookseller’s reorganized debt. The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based retailer also has hired bankruptcy and restructuring lawyers to advise in its restructuring efforts, which center on negotiations to secure a $500 million credit line from GE Capital.
Borders, the second-largest book chain in the United States, announced in late December that it would delay payments to key publishers and distributors, leading some — such as Diamond Book Distributors — to stop shipping books. Jacket Copy reminds us that Borders Group is closing nearly 200 Waldebooks and Borders Express outlets before the end of the month. Additionally, it’s shuttering 17 Borders superstore locations nationwide. [The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal]
- January 17, 2011 @ 08:15 AM by Kevin Melrose
What Are You Reading?
Batgirl #17
Welcome to a long holiday weekend (at least here in the United States) edition of What Are You Reading? Today our special guest is Doug Zawisza, who writes reviews and the occasional article for Comic Book Resources.
To see what Doug and the Robot 6 gang are reading, click below.
- January 16, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
Red 5 founder talks digital strategy
Red 5 was one of the first comics publishers to jump into digital distribution, and Atomic Robo is one of the first digital success stories, so when Red 5 founder Paul Ens talks about his company’s digital comics strategy at TFAW.com, it’s worthwhile to listen in.
Red 5 led with the best-sellers, making their top titles, Atomic Robo and Neozoic, available for the iPhone back when each issue was a separate app. And Ens says the comics are selling, with both revenues and the number of comics downloaded increasing every month. “In terms of total sales revenue, it’s still small but growing,” he says.
Earlier today, Mark Millar expressed some concern that creators would not make as much money from digital comics. Ens has a different take, and I’m going to quote his answer at length, because I think he nails it:
- January 15, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Comics on the iPad: Yen Press launches its own app
Yen Press launched its iPad app this week, and it’s a thing of beauty—which is good, because it’s also expensive.
The app itself is free, of course, but the books will cost ya: Single volumes are priced at $8.99 each, which is less than the list price of $12.99 for print volumes but pretty close to the actual price most people pay for print—in fact, the print edition of vol. 1 of Maximum Ride is going for less than that on Amazon.com right now.
Let’s talk look and feel first: Yen Press feels deluxe. It opens up to a gorgeous full-color page from Maximum Ride. The catalog page is less cluttered than most, with three featured books framed in black at the top and six more in catalog listings below, with no distracting animation or scrolling. Touch any part of a catalog listing and a frame pops up with complete information. But here’s the nicest part: Touch the preview button and you immediately get a full-page preview, not the smaller images that other app developers provide in their catalogs. Everything loads quickly, so the whole thing works like a dream. The Yen folks didn’t use the comiXology or iVerse platform, like most other publishers, but they did a great job.
- January 15, 2011 @ 08:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
The Fifth Color | Comics resolutions for 2011
That's a sexy little hip flick Scott's got going on there...
Pardon me, but I seem to have arrived a little tardy to the New Year. The Mister and I, as some of you might know, are going through some medical procedures and health issues at the moment but Dr. Erskine promises us that the Super Soldier program is exceeding his expectations.
Now, if only we could walk him to his car…
2011 is a brand new year and new years come with resolutions. And why not? Past mistakes are behind us, the previous year can be listed and filed and tucked away for True Believers to face front and look over the horizon at all the things that Could Be. This highly charged moment of calender change and future reflect should turn inwards from time to time and help us evolve along with the fast-paced 21st century. Goals set can be goals achieved, and who knows what wonders you can discover if you challenge yourself!
Thanks to the rocky start of 2011, I will be starting my New Year’s Resolutions as of Jan. 15. It’s kind of terrifying saying this in public, but it’s important because putting all these down with chisel on this here Robot 6 web-stone makes them all the more permanent. Also, a lot of my resolutions this year are about comics. However, these are something I’d hope all comic readers could keep in mind as the year progresses, hopefully making us better consumers so that the product we so delightfully consume improves as well.
Wanna see ‘em? Well, listed below are five of my personal New Years’ resolutions as pertains to Marvel comics (and comics in general).
- January 14, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by Carla Hoffman
Page by page: Ryan Cody on creating Icarus
Icarus
Editor’s note: Today we welcome Ryan Cody, creator of the self-published comic Icarus, who provides his thoughts on the process he used for creating the comic.
by Ryan Cody
I grew up reading superhero comics, mostly Marvel, but I loved Batman as well. As I grew older, I started developing and creating my own superheroes. The first comic I ever worked on was a self-published little gem called The Hurricane Kids. The writer and I had no idea what we were doing, but we put out an issue or two and went back and forth with several companies about publishing it. After almost a year’s worth of back and forth with a big name publisher, they decided against it — saying that they couldn’t sell it, “Independent superhero books do not sell,” they said. Later that year, I worked on Villains for Viper comics, a small book which featured super-powered characters. It got a lot of attention but just as I was warned, it did not sell very well. I have since pitched a comic with an artist who is far superior than myself, only to get it turned down because the characters had super powers. That artist has since gone on to work at one of the top publishers. Well, I never learn my lesson and have decided to do my own book, complete with everything I love about comics. Action, intrigue, violence, and superheroes, because sometimes I just want to draw a guy getting punched through a building.
- January 14, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by JK Parkin
Six by 6 | Six potentially great 2011 comics you haven’t heard of
The Man Who Grew His Beard
Like you, I’m all a-twitter about the release of those Carl Barks books from Fantagraphics later this year. (you are a-twitter, aren’t you?) Not to mention Craig Thompson’s Habibi, Paul Pope’s Battling Boy, Chester Brown’s Paying for It and that Grant Morrison Multiversity mini-series. And, hey, maybe we’ll even see the first volume of Pogo! Yep, by any yardstick, it seems like 2011 promises to be another year of really great releases.
But, even beyond the big-name titles and huge company crossovers, there are a number of comics and graphic novels arriving in stores this year that warrant further attention. They may have not have garnered much of your notice, since they’re not attached to a well-known creator or license or come from overseas. Here then, are six such books, all due this year, all of which I’m willing to bet good money aren’t on your radar, but should be. As usual, be sure to note any books you’re excited about but haven’t generated much buzz yet in the comments section.
1) The Man Who Grew His Beard by Olivier Schrauwen (Fantagraphics). If you’ve had the lucky opportunity to read Schrauwen’s My Boy, or perused his work in the anthology Mome, then you’ll know this Belgian artist is the real deal — a true, utterly unique and frequently inspired cartoonist who draws upon century-old cartooning styles (McCay, Outcault) to create something contemporary and frequently bizarre. This is the first American collection of Schrauwen’s work and I’m really excited to see him reach a potentially wider audience. Actually, I’m just excited to read more of an artist I’ve only been able to catch in dribs and drabs.
- January 14, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Quote of the day | Mark Millar on digital comics
Mark Millar
Okay, I’m loving the fact that Millarworld books account for 8 of the top 10 downloads in 2010. That’s cool, but what superficially looks like a great deal for creators is less so under a little scrutiny. Yes, you’re eliminating paper, printing, comic store and distributor costs, but there’s hidden costs here I haven’t seen highlighted anywhere.
1/ Apple take 30% right off the bat.
2/ In the case of Wanted, Comixology then splits 50/50 with the publisher.
3/ Then the publisher pays the agent and creative team out of the remaining cash depending on their deal.In hard numbers, the digital comic is normally half the price of the paper comic, but you have just as many percentages to pay out as a creative team to an electronic distributor and publisher. So effectively the creative team is getting half as much money. For creators, this isn’t great and for comic stores this is awful. I don’t mind paying thirty percent to a local store where my friends work and the guys care about the product. But do I want this money going to Apple?
–Kick-Ass and Wanted co-creator Mark Millar, commenting on the fact that issues of both titles made up the bulk of the top ten paid comics list for the Comics by comiXology application. Perhaps more disturbing, though, was something else he noted — “… I checked several sources last night and nobody could tell me what my download numbers were for these supposed record-breaking numbers of mine.”
Also, someone should send him the link to The Not .99 Method that Warren Ellis highlighted yesterday.
- January 14, 2011 @ 11:30 AM by JK Parkin
Ross Campbell’s unfinished X-Kids
Cannonball by Ross Campbell
Wet Moon and Shadoweyes creator Ross Campbell shares some preliminary sketches he did of various X-characters for Project Rooftop. “i was going to do a bunch of redesigns for Project: Rooftop of some of the younger X-Men characters, and i was tooling with these for a good chunk of last year but i never had time to finish them up, so i figured i might as well post these preliminary sketches since who knows if they’ll ever get done,” he said.
Despite not being complete, there are still some cool ideas here; I particularly like what he did with Marrow, Jubilee and Angel Salvadore. Go check them out.
- January 14, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
The coolest Best of 2010 list you’ve ever listened to
The latest episode of Robin McConnell’s indispensable comics podcast Inkstuds is a fun one: It’s a critics’ roundtable on the best comics of 2010, featuring Chris Butcher, Bill Kartalopoulos, and Tucker Stone. It’s a rare treat to hear any of these guys talk at length about great comics: Tucker is the busy manager of Brooklyn’s Bergen Street Comics and divides most of his writing time these days between film, music, and kicking the crap out of the latest Wednesday shipment; old-school comics blogospherian Chris has mostly moved away from criticism in favor of running Toronto’s beloved Beguiling comics shop and organizing TCAF; and Bill’s thoughts on comics are generally reserved for the lucky few who take his classes at Parsons, sit in on the panels he organizes and moderates for SPX and BCGF, or visit the comic art exhibitions he curates. To hear the three of them bat around the likes of Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza, Brecht Evens’s The Wrong Place, Dash Shaw’s Bodyworld, Blaise Larmee’s Young Lions, the comics of Michael DeForge, Charles Burns’s X’ed Out, and Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez’s Love and Rockets: New Stories #3 is to hear three great comics minds pull apart what worked — and what didn’t — in some of the year’s most notable and forward-looking releases. Standout moments include Bill’s point on how improved color reproduction has given artists the freedom to do more with color than simply filling in the lines, Chris’s admission that he’s just never been in the right place to read Footnotes, and Tucker’s arguments for why both of Los Bros Hernandez handed in some of their best-ever work in the latest L&R.
- January 14, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by Sean T. Collins