2011 March
Dean Trippe’s pitch for a kid-oriented Lois Lane series
Every now and then word comes out of a great idea for a comic that, for one reason or another, never made it’s way to print. This week, you’re in for a doozy.
Cartoonist Dean Trippe (Butterfly) was working with DC editor Chris Cerasi for a number of months on a new series reportedly to be part of DC’s kids line. Going under the title Lois Lane, Girl Reporter, Trippe’s proposal outlined a series of young-adult novels co-written with John Campbell and illustrated by Daniel Krall. The premise, as taken directly from the proposal to DC, was:
Lois Lane, Girl Reporter follows the adventures of young Lois Lane. At eleven years old, Lois has discovered her calling: investigative journalism. She sets out to right wrongs and help out her friends. This series explores Lois’s character, reveals her surprising early influence on the future Man of Steel, and introduces fun new elements into this enduring character’s back story.
In each book, Lois will tackle a problem or mystery affecting the members of the community she finds herself in as she travels around the country. The investigations in this series will not be mystical or supernatural (though some characters may suspect such sources), but real world problems that Lois works to set right.
After months years of delay, Trippe reports that “it doesn’t look like the current leadership of DC is remotely interested in this kinda thing” and has posted it online for posterity. Trippe is currently working on a new OGN with J. Torres called Power Lunch for Oni Press, and still hopes to get a chance on one of DC or Marvel’s superheroes in the near future.
- March 24, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Chris Arrant
C2E2 | Some comics to look forward to
One of the best things about comics conventions is getting creators and marketers to talk about the things that aren’t quite ready for prime time yet, projects that are coming up but haven’t been the subject of a torrent of press releases. I heard about a number of interesting comics at C2E2 this past weekend; here are a few that piqued my interest.
The one that really grabbed me is Dark Horse’s nonfiction graphic novel about the Green River killer, which was first announced in 2009. The Dark Horse folks like to take their time with their books, and marketing director Jeremy Atkins tells me that it is now slated for a September release. The book is written by Jeff Jensen, whose father was a member of the investigative team on the murders. “It’s stories that have never been told before,” said Atkins. “It’s not sensationalized at all. It’s more for a true crime audience than a crime fiction audience.”
If that’s too dark for you, here’s a bit of sweetness and light: Amy Mebberson, whose super-cute art graced the global manga Divalicious (you can read the whole first volume online at the link) and many of Boom! Studios The Muppet Show comics, is not letting any grass grow under her feet: She is one of the artists on Ape Entertainment’s Strawberry Shortcake comics, doing the coloring and some of the pencilling. This increased my interest in Strawberry Shortcake 100%.
- March 24, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
‘The smartest business decision I’ve made in years’: A look at how Wizard World Digital is doing
from Wizard World Version 1.3
When Wizard World CEO Gareb Shamus decided to cancel his long-running magazines Wizard and ToyFare, and relaunch them in an amalgamated electronic form as a digital magazine called Wizard World, he did not do so quietly. Well, alright, the initial press release didn’t so much as mention the cancellations themselves, or the employees laid off in the process. But Shamus has been quite vocal about his new project’s prospects for success, as well as what he perceives to be the dire state of the industries surrounding it. In an interview with iFanboy’s Ron Richards, Shamus spoke of the new digital magazine sharing the things its staff likes with “the millions of people that we reach all the time,” in contrast with more traditional digital-news outlets like websites, which he said “are pretty worthless in their ability to have an impact on an audience.” And in the editor’s letter (see above) for Wizard World‘s third issue, “Version 1.3,” by way of explaining why he made the leap to digital publishing, he writes:
- March 24, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
Duncan the Wonder Dog nabs Lynd Ward prize
AdHouse Books announced on their blog yesterday that Duncan the Wonder Dog, by Adam Hines, has won the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize. This is the first year for the prize, which is sponsored by the Penn State University Libraries and administered by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, which is affiliated with the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress. The judges award the prize, which consists of $2,500 and a copy of the Library of America’s two-volume set of Lynd Ward’s graphic novels, to the best U.S. or Canadian graphic novel published in the previous calendar year by a living author.
Duncan sold out in print back in January, and AdHouse has published it as a digital graphic novel while waiting for the new books to arrive. Hines has also posted Show One at his blog, although he mentions plans to take it down this month when the print edition becomes available again.
Fantagraphics notes on their blog that Drew Weing’s Set to Sea is a runner-up for the prize. The Center for the Book people haven’t sent out an official announcement yet, but the internet runs faster than the printing press. On that note, it’s interesting that both these book awards went to graphic novels that have significant digital releases—and in fact, are both available in their entirety online. It seems like the opposite of Ward’s handmade, low-tech ethos, but really it isn’t—handmade by their creators with minimal editorial interference, webcomics really are the new woodcuts.
(Via The Beat.)
- March 24, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | Banned Egyptian GN to be published in English
Metro
Graphic novels | Metro, the graphic novel by Egyptian cartoonist Magdy El Shafee that was banned in 2009 under Hosni Mubarak’s regime, will be published in English next year by Metropolitan, a division of Macmillan. El Shafee who, along with his publisher Mohammed al Sharqawi was convicted of disturbing public morals, has appealed to Egypt’s new Ministry of Culture to have the ban lifted. “I’m waiting to hear if the minister of culture will allow it to be published again,” El Shafee says. “They will have to consult with the courts. I’m hoping there may be some kind of apology.” [CNN.com]
Legal | In an article that’s heavy on background and light on new information, Matthew Beloni reports that the attorney representing the heirs of Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster has asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to determine exactly what elements from the Man of Steel’s mythology his clients can reclaim as a result of the 2008 court ruling. [THR, Esq.]
Retailing | Barnes & Noble stock fell 16 cents following a report that bookstore chain, the largest in the United States, will likely end its months-long search for a buyer. Although the auction isn’t over, initial interest from at least seven potential buyers is said to have waned following the first round of bidding. [Bloomberg]
- March 24, 2011 @ 07:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
C2E2 | Sunday wrap-up
Lots of young people at C2E2 on Sunday
I don’t remember having this problem last year, but security was especially tight at the show. Saturday evening I got booted out at closing time while talking to one of the artists I was rooming with and Sunday morning press wasn’t allowed onto the floor until the show opened at 10:00. I’m not complaining exactly, it was just different from the open access I remembered from last year. Even Friday morning this year we were allowed onto the floor during the set-up hours before 10:00.
But if I hadn’t had to wait in line to get in Sunday morning, I wouldn’t have met Doug Zawisza, who was covering several panels for CBR, including the Mark Waid/Matt Fraction one that I’d enjoyed so much on Saturday. We talked about that, about what comics we’re reading, and about what our kids are into. I’d forgotten that one of the joys of conventions is just meeting and chatting with people who love comics as much as you do.
Speaking of kids, one of the best panels I attended all weekend wasn’t on the program. It was dinner after the show on Friday with Robot 6′s Brigid Alverson (who also writes for Good Comics for Kids), Eric Wight (Frankie Pickle), school librarian extraordinaire John Schumacher, and Chris Samnee (Thor: The Mighty Avenger). Seriously, if you take me out of the mix, you couldn’t organize a better panel on all-ages comics if you had a year to do it. We talked about our favorite kid-appropriate books, how comics for young people are in better shape than ever, and how nice it would be if DC and Marvel got on board.
- March 23, 2011 @ 07:57 PM by Michael May
Your Wednesday Sequence 3 | Dash Shaw
BodyWorld chapter 8 (2008; read), panels 291-296. Dash Shaw.
When “sequence” in comics comes up, what’s being talked about most often is the order of individual panels. But the medium is more complex than that. Comics is the herky-jerkiest, most truncated, stop-and-go medium of them all, every formal element glimpsed for a second in each panel before disappearing completely and then reconstituting themselves in the next. Word balloons, for example, don’t mimic the continuous sound of speech by popping up one after the other any more than panels with blank borders cut in between them mimic the neverending flow of light. Sequence is everything in comics; not just the way the panels link together, but the way the pages turn and the camera angles shift and the characters move and the way their voices are heard. Everything the comics reader takes in, everything we are fed, is taken in the context of the previous panels, before contributing to the context in which we take the next. Everything is sequenced.
By and large, the medium’s artists have accepted the dominance of sequence in comics and set themselves to trying to make it sing. But every once in a while there’s an interesting attempt to set the medium free from its point-by-point presentation of things and create something a little more flowing, more integrated with itself and less staccato. Walt Simonson had his all-splash-page issue of Thor, which took away the panels and allowed single images to code for long stretches of time, and JH Williams and Alan Moore’s final issue of Promethea wasn’t even pages, but one giant poster with a whole story’s worth of information on it. (There are obviously more.) Of course, neither of those comics took sequence out of the reading experience. That might well be impossible, given that the human eye simply can’t take in a whole story all at once, but has to consider its component parts one at a time. Rather, those books were attempts to take sequence out of the panels it usually occupies and place it in a less chopped-up, more immediate environment, a place for it to progress rather than rebuild itself again and again inside every new set of panel borders. Dash Shaw did the same thing in the BodyWorld sequence above, but his way was different, and to my eyes more interesting.
- March 23, 2011 @ 07:30 PM by Matt Seneca
Like coffee with your comics? Marvel joins Starbucks Digital Network
Starbucks Digital Network
Starbucks announced today that, in partnership, with Yahoo! it’s expanding its Starbucks Digital Network, which offers customers access to free online content its nearly 6,800 locations in the United States. Soon you’ll be able sip a mochachino while browsing material from the likes of The Economist, Mediabistro and … Marvel Digital Comics.
Yes, as of April 23, the Starbucks faithful will have “unlimited, free access” to the full library of Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited via the Starbucks Digital Network’s entertainment channel. That’s, presumably, for browsing and not downloading.
Tom Spurgeon has some commentary on the announcement, noting that he’s “not sure this deal all by itself has a drastic impact, mostly because we’re talking about subsets of subsets.” Still, it’s an interesting strategy on Marvel’s part for trying to expand its audience.
You can read the press release after the break.
Continue Reading »
- March 23, 2011 @ 02:17 PM by Kevin Melrose
Comic Couture | Azzarello and Threadless team for a second round of comic T-shirts
From 100 Bullets #100
Last summer the T-shirt site Threadless teamed up with Jill Thompson, Cliff Chiang, Tony Moore and Art Art Baltazar to create a line of “Comics-On Tees.”
Well, they’re doing it again, and this year they’ve teamed up with 100 Bullets writer Brian Azzarello to create a series of noir T-shirts. And one of the artists could be you, as right now Threadless is holding a contest to find an artist for the project. It runs through April 10 and includes a list of other cool prizes as well.
You can find the complete details over on their site.
- March 23, 2011 @ 01:01 PM by JK Parkin
Ellis shows the sausage-making for new graphic novel with Oeming
Half Moon concept art
Writer Warren Ellis and artist Michael Avon Oeming are teaming on a new project called Half Moon, and Ellis is using his blog to show their progress as it moves from the idea stage to reality.
“We’re working in realtime on this one. We agreed on the general concepts just a couple of hours ago, and will spend the next few days in development on it, to see what we’ve actually got,” Ellis said on his blog on Monday. “So I thought, and Mike agreed, it might be interesting to open the process out and let you see a bit of the sausage-making. As it were.”
Ellis said the project sprang from an email from Oeming that simply said, “Warren, I’ve been wanting to work with you for a long time.”
“And then a flurry of responses – because I’m not stupid, I wanted to get moving before he sobered up or the drugs wore off or whatever the hell had happened to him to make him email me,” Ellis said.
A second post shared the above concept art. Keep an eye on his blog for further updates.
- March 23, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
C2E2 | A look at the Dark Horse Digital app
Dark Horse Marketing Director Jeremy Atkins shows off the app
Dark Horse is getting ready to roll out their much-delayed Dark Horse Digital iPad app, and marketing director Jeremy Atkins showed me the beta version at C2E2 last weekend. The app is currently scheduled to launch in mid-April with about 300 titles, Atkins said, and Dark Horse does plan to do some simultaneous print and digital releases, although they have not settled on which titles would be involved.
In some ways, all iPad apps are alike: The Dark Horse app serves as both storefront and comics reader; you open it up to an array of covers, and you tap them for more information or to buy the comic. But Dark Horse built their app from the ground up, and there are some innovations here.
One is the grouping of comics. While most apps present the user with a bewildering array of single issues, the Dark Horse app groups them by title in “stacks,” so that a single series or story arc is a single icon on the home page. You tap that to get to the individual issues. Instead of trades, Dark Horse will be offering “bundles” of issues for a discount over the single price; the issues will still be read one at a time. The selection is pretty eclectic and includes Kazuo Koike’s Lone Wolf and Cub, making Dark Horse one of the first American publishers to offer Japanese manga on the iPad.
- March 23, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
BOOM! to distribute Avatar graphic novels to the book trade
Avatar Press
BOOM! Studios is now distributing Avatar Press graphic novels to the book trade in North America through their mass-market partners Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins Canada. The agreement began on Monday.
In a press release distributed late last night, BOOM! founder/CEO Ross Richie said the Avatar library complimented BOOM!’s existing line and wouldn’t cannibalize BOOM!’s various imprints. “Avatars’ CEO William Christensen is a brilliant businessman and has a proven track record of great Direct Market success. Avatar has great growth potential in the mass market book trade, and we look forward to being an excellent partner in their continued expansion,” Richie said.
Up until this week, Avatar’s books were distributed through Diamond Book Distributors. BOOM! began using Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins Canada in July 2009. You can find the complete press release after the jump.
- March 23, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by JK Parkin
Animating Tatsumi
It’s not exactly a motion comic, but director Erik Khoo has somehow managed to make an animated version of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life. He does this by coloring the panels and introducing limited motion, and in this short YouTube video, he and his staff discuss how they used both live-action sequences to model the motion and computer techniques to transform static panels to moving pictures. Tatsumi seems like a strange candidate for animation, but Khoo says, “You look at his panels, [and] it’s almost like a very well done storyboard for a film.” This making-of film has a definite promotional aspect (everyone uses the full name of every product—that’s the tell), but it is interesting to see the creative and technical decisions that were made in translating the book into film.
- March 23, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Another performer injured in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
T.V. Carpio
The beleaguered Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark was dealt another blow Tuesday with the announcement that T.V. Carpio, who plays the villain Arachne, will be sidelined for the next two weeks following an injury sustained during one of the show’s many fight scenes.
According to The New York Times, Carpio was hurt during a March 16 preview performance in an aggressive Act II showdown between the eight-legged Arachne and Peter Parker (played that evening by Matthew James Thomas). Although the newspaper reports the nature of the injury was not disclosed, it’s believed to be a neck injury; Broadway World contends it’s “whiplash.”
Understudy America Olivo has been performing as Arachne, and will continue in the part until Carpio’s return.
Carpio is the fifth performer injured in a production plagued by difficulties. In fact, she took over the role of Arachne from original actress Natalie Mendoza, who left Spider-Man in late December after she suffered a concussion during the problem-filled first preview.
The $70-million musical, by far the most expensive and technically ambitious show in Broadway history, has had a tumultuous month — which is really saying something, considering its rocky past: In the wake of overwhelmingly negative reviews and rumors of behind-the-scenes tensions, director Julie Taymor stepped aside on March 9 to make way for an expanded creative team tasked with overhauling the production. And just this week a report surfaced that producers are seeking to replace choreographer Daniel Ezralow, a Taymor loyalist responsible for designing the ambitious flying sequences.
Preview performances will be shut down from April 19 to May 11 to accommodate what are expected to be sweeping changes to the show — including a reduction of Arachne’s role. Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is now scheduled to open on June 14.
- March 23, 2011 @ 07:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Manhattan quarantined in Marvel’s ‘Spider-Island’ summer event [Updated]
The Amazing Spider-Man #666
While Marvel fans knew the April-debuting “Infested” arc would put them on the path to “Spider-Island,” few details were known about the next big Spider-Man event. That is, until this evening.
On today’s episode of G4′s Attack of the Show, “Fresh Ink” host Blair Butler revealed that the storyline begins in August’s Amazing Spider-Man #667 as more than 16,000 New Yorkers begin to manifest abilities similar to Peter Parker. Among those residents embroiled in a spider-powered crime wave? Hawkeye and Shocker.
But as the crisis worsens, with many New Yorkers sprouting extra limbs, Mayor J. Jonah Jameson is forced to place Manhattan under quarantine. Hence, “Spider-Island.”
Butler teases that the event, by Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos, will permanently change some of Spider-Man’s core cast members.
Watch the “Fresh Ink” segment after the break.
Update: Now with the official press release and cover art, after the break.
Continue Reading »
- March 22, 2011 @ 05:47 PM by Kevin Melrose