2011 February
Check out the latest round of Xeric winners
We all seem to have missed this, but The Comics Reporter caught it: This year’s Xeric Grant winners were announced a little while ago. And they are…
- Nick Maandag for Streakers (possibly NSFW)
- Melissa Mendes for Freddy Stories
- John Martz for Heaven All Day
- Kevin Mutch for Fantastic Life
- Brendan Leach for The Pterodactyl Hunters (in the Guilded City)
- Steve LeCouilliard for Much the Miller’s Son
- Benjamin Rivers for Snow
Established by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Peter Laird, the Xeric Foundation gives grants to comics creators to finance self-publishing their work. Previous winners include Adrian Tomine, Megan Kelso, Jessica Abel, Linda Medley, James Sturm, Jim Ottaviani, Nick Bertozzi, Jeff Lemire, and Gene Yang, which suggests that the judges do a pretty good job of picking grant recipients.
- February 21, 2011 @ 10:30 AM by Brigid Alverson
BOOM! Kids goes Kaboom!, to publish Peanuts comics
Kaboom!
BOOM! Studios has been teasing “BOOM! Kids 2.0″ for awhile now, and earlier today they sent out the above image that denotes a name change for their kid’s line, from BOOM! Kids to Kaboom! They’ve also taken down the BOOM! Kids website and replaced it with the teaser.
That was followed a few hours later with this image:
- February 21, 2011 @ 09:30 AM by JK Parkin
70 retailers sign up to be crushed by Godzilla
This wasn't in the job description! IDW employees flee Godzilla on the Comic-Con variant cover
IDW is launching Godzilla: King of Monsters at the end of March, and it will be their biggest single-issue launch ever, according to editor-in-chief Chris Ryall, because of a promotion that got a lot bigger than they expected: They offered every retailer who ordered 500 or more copies of the comic a custom cover showing Godzilla crushing their comic store. They expected about a dozen retailers to take part, but they ended up with over 70, which makes for a pretty impressive print run.
Ryall credits IDW employee Chris Mowry, who works in the production department, with coming up with the idea, which must have brought a few headaches, as the art team had only two weeks to do all the custom covers. Still, the result is an instant collectible as well as a great talking point. IDW will also have special variant covers for Comic-Con featuring IDW employees fleeing the giant monster. With a well known property and the creative team of Eric Powell, Tracy March, and Phil Hester, the comic already had a lot going for it, but the custom covers put it over the top. For those who are curious, Rich Johnston has posted all the variant covers at Bleeding Cool.
- February 21, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | Impact of Borders bankruptcy; Comic Relief’s return?
Borders Group headquarters
Retailing | Borders Group began liquidation sales over the weekend at 200 stores, discounting items 20 percent to 40 percent. As Publishers Weekly and Blogcritics chart the 40-year rise and fall of the retailer, PW’s Jim Milliot looks at the effects the bookseller’s bankruptcy will have on the publishing industry: “The trickle-down impact will affect everyone from manufacturers to agents. Borders accounted for about 8% of overall industry sales, a higher percentage in some categories. A downsized Borders means publishers are likely to receive smaller orders and in turn place smaller first printings, resulting in less business for printers. The likelihood of lower print sales, one publisher said, means that books acquired one or two years ago when Borders was much bigger will have a more difficult time earning the advance back and that less shelf space could mean lower advances.” [Publishers Weekly]
Retailing | Tracey Taylor has details of retailer Jack Rems’ plans to resurrect Berkeley, Calif., institution Comic Relief as a new store called The Escapist — a nod to the Michael Chabon character — possibly at the same location. [Berkeleyside]
- February 21, 2011 @ 07:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
Get your monster-hunter on with Evan Palmer & Anna Bongiovanni’s “The Feast”
I’ve been meaning to send you all in the direction of “The Feast,” a short fantasy-adventure story about a bunch of village children and the giant forest monster that preys upon them, ever since it went up on Top Shelf’s webcomics portal Top Shelf 2.0 last week. Hopefully you’ll agree after reading it that cartoonists Anna Bongiovanni and Evan Palmer’s lushly illustrated monster romp was well worth the wait. You’ll catch a lot of Jeff Smith influence in the creature designs, action choreography, and elegantly inked black-and-white wilderness, but it took Bone a long, long time to get as unexpectedly dark as this gets by the end. This has “can’t wait to see more from this pair” written all over it. Sink your teeth into it.
- February 21, 2011 @ 06:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
What Are You Reading?
Daytripper
Welcome to What Are You Reading?, where we talk about what comics and other stuff we’ve been reading lately.
Today’s special guest is Joe Keatinge, writer and co-creator of the upcoming Image comic Brutal with Frank Cho. He’s also the writer of the final “Twisted Savage Dragon Funnies” installment in April’s Savage Dragon #171, drawn by Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen, Billy Dogma’s Dean Haspiel, Nikolai Dante’s Simon Fraser, Parade (With Fireworks)’s Mike Cavallaro, The Transmigration of Ultra Lad’s Joe Infurnari, Fahrenheit 451: The Authorized Adaptation’s Tim Hamilton and Olympians’ George O’Connor. He’s also executive editor of the PopGun anthology, he’s got an ongoing series coming soon that he can’t say anything else about and with his fellow studio members at Tranquility Base, regularly beats up on 13 year olds at laser tag.
To see what Joe and the Robot 6 crew have been reading lately, click below.
- February 20, 2011 @ 12:10 PM by JK Parkin
‘Like’ us on Facebook
You may have noticed a new addition to our home page, and each post — easy access to our Facebook page! If you haven’t already, come “Like us” for quick and easy access to all our posts on Facebook, while you share your thoughts and comments.
- February 20, 2011 @ 08:45 AM by JK Parkin
Saturday Shelf Porn!
Welcome once again to Shelf Porn, our weekly look at someone’s collection. Today’s Shelf Porn comes from Matt Rapier in Charlotte, N.C. who writes for the Green Lantern movie site Welcome to Coast City.
If you’d like to show off your shelves, you can send a write-up and pictures to jkparkin@yahoo.com.
Now let’s hear from Matt …
- February 19, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
‘It all comes out right in the end’: A review of the All-Star Superman movie
All-Star Superman
Warner Bros’ animated adaptation of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman is so reverent and faithful toward the source material that the film, to a certain extent, feels like a pale copy of its inspiration.
That’s not necessarily a damning criticism. Bruce Timm and company took the right approach in attempting to get as close a conversion from page to screen as possible (to do otherwise would have pleased no one). But the comic itself is so rich in detail and episodic in nature that even a trim, streamlined version like this that still manages to hit a number of the right high points feels a bit flabby in comparison. Saying “the book is better” is a rather easy cheat for a critic — the book is almost always better, but I suspect that fans of the comic won’t be able to watch this without running a compare/contrast checklist in their head and find the film coming up a wee bit short. The good news is that those coming fresh to the material probably won’t notice anything wrong at all.
- February 19, 2011 @ 08:00 AM by Chris Mautner
The Fifth Color | Forward into the Past with Marvel in May 2011
The next Marvel movie? Rocket Raccoon and Groot.
Can you believe it? By this time, in May, we’ll have seen the Thor movie. Released May 6, Thor is only a herald of things to come, a major movie move all through the summer with X-Men: First Class on June 3 and Captain America: the First Avenger on July 22. May is the start of a huge multimedia push, endearing the public to the Marvel brand and putting out the characters we’ve known and loved into the buying public.
Oh, hopefully someone will read some comics along the way, too.
And in that vein I have the May 2011 Marvel Solicitations, my crystal ball and the overwhelming feeling that Thor is going to be the best movie I see this year.
Let’s take a look:
- February 18, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by Carla Hoffman
30 Days of Night returns in May
Kevin noted last September that IDW is launching a new 30 Days of Night series, and here it is: The first issue of 30 Days of Night: Night Again is listed in the March Previews for a May release.
Horror writer Joe Lansdale and artist Sam Kieth (The Maxx) are taking over the series, which was created by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith and was the bases for two feature films and countless spinoffs. In the original, published in 2002, vampires came to Alaska to take advantage of the 30-day-long night of the Arctic winter, using it for a prolonged feeding frenzy. In 30 Days of Night: Night Again, a group of survivors comes to an Alaskan research facility, where scientists are puzzling over a strange object found in the ice. It’s probably safe to say that bloody carnage results.
The press release is deliberately vague, but IDW editor-in-chief Chris Ryall shows off some of Davide Furno’s variant covers at his blog that hint at the nature of the story.
- February 18, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
RoboCharity: Ron Marz puts out the call to help feed Detroit
RoboCharity
Earlier this month a tweet to Detroit Mayor David Bing set off a campaign to build a statue of Robocop in the motor city, the setting for the 1987 movie that starred Peter Weller as the title character. Using Facebook and Kickstarter, fans of the idea were able to raise $50,000 to build the statue.
Artifacts writer and CBR columnist Ron Marz, however, noted on Twitter that there were probably better uses for the $50,000 — which has set off a campaign of its own.
“This was something that happened completely organically. I saw that the Kickstarter campaign to actually build a RoboCop statue in Detroit had brought in more than $50,000, and it just struck me as kind of ludicrous,” Marz told Robot 6. “So I suggested on Twitter that a chunk of money that size would be better spent doing some real good, like feeding people in a soup kitchen. I’ve never actually met Gary Whitta, but we’ve struck up a friendship via Twitter. Gary suggested that the sort of whimsey the statue represents has a place, and ultimately I agree, but maybe now is not the time or place, when there are hungry people.”
Whitta, the writer of Book of Eli, said he’d donate money to a Detroit-based food charity if Marz would, and thus RoboCharity was born.
- February 18, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
WordPress takes down Funky Winkerbean snark sites [UPDATED]
In its younger days, Tom Batiuk’s newspaper comic strip Funky Winkerbean was lighthearted and occasionally even funny, with, if I recall correctly, lots of jokes about selling band candy. In recent years, however, it has become notorious as the daily newspaper reader’s pit stop of despair, as disease, bankruptcy, dysfunction, and loneliness stalk the saddest cast of characters ever to grace the funny pages; the best that can be said of them is that they smirk in the face of death.
This has not gone unnoticed by the internet. Josh Fruhlinger mocks the strip (along with a good dozen others) on a regular basis at The Comics Curmudgeon, and at Comics Alliance, Chris Sims actually has a monthly roundup of the most depressing Funky Winkerbean strips. And until earlier this week, there were two blogs devoted to commenting on each day’s comic, Stuck Funky and Son of Stuck Funky (although Stuck Funky was no longer updated).
Then WordPress.com, which hosted both strips, got a cease and desist letter from Batiuk’s lawyers, demanding that both blogs be taken down because they were infringing copyright. WordPress complied, apparently without notifying the site’s owner. What is a bit more disturbing is that the C&D letter demanded that WordPress turn over the blogger’s name and address “so that we may take action to prevent the further unauthorized copying and distribution of this content,” which sounds kind of threatening.
There’s a lively discussion up at The Daily Cartoonist, in which the general thinking is that Batiuk went after these two blogs because they posted the strip every day (and then mocked it), while Fruhlinger and Sims go after a number of targets. Regardless of the reason, Son of Stuck Funky is back, albeit without images, dishing out that delicious Funky snark once more.
UPDATE: Batiuk responds at The Daily Cartoonist
- February 18, 2011 @ 11:02 AM by Brigid Alverson
Gary Shore’s awesome Wolverine trailer
Wolverine Vs The Hand from Gary Shore on Vimeo.
Director Gary Shore shows why Wolverine is the best he is in a really awesome faux trailer for the Wolverine movie I’d love to see. Via Wolverine scribe Jason Aaron, who calls it “pretty damn awesome.”
- February 18, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Hero author Perry Moore found dead; more on Borders
Perry Moore
Passings | Perry Moore, executive producer of The Chronicles of Narnia movie franchise and author of Hero, was found dead Thursday in his New York City apartment after an apparent overdose. He was 39. A longtime comics fan, Moore wrote the acclaimed 2007 young-adult novel Hero, about the world’s first gay teen superhero. At one point he and Stan Lee were developing the book as a series for Showtime, but the cable network ultimately passed.
Moore was outspoken about the portrayal of gay characters in mainstream superhero comics, releasing in 2007 a “Women in Refrigerators”-inspired list of ignored, mistreated or retconned LGBT heroes. He also appeared at Comic-Con International in 2008 and 2009 on the gays in comics panels. [New York Daily News]
- February 18, 2011 @ 08:31 AM by Kevin Melrose