2011 April
Food or Comics? | This week’s comics on a budget
Justice League Generation Lost #24
Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy on Wednesday based on certain spending limits — $15 and $30 — as well as what we’d get if we had extra money or a gift card to spend on a “Splurge” item.
Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList if you’d like to play along in our comments section.
JK Parkin
If I had $15: It would be tough. For one thing, DC has three books for $5 or more each that I’m interested in — the last issues of Justice League Generation Lost and Brightest Day, as well as Action Comics #900. If I bought all three, well … I couldn’t buy all three, at least not for $15. I stopped reading Brightest Day several issues ago, so I’m more curious about the return of a certain character to the DCU proper than anything. And I’ll probably hold off on Action as well, at least for now. But Justice League Generation Lost‘s final issue ($4.99) would be at the top of my buy list for sure.
- April 26, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by JK Parkin
Scott Campbell visita el Planeta de los Simios
Robot 6 has Planet of the Apes on the brain lately. Kevin Melrose just finished a PotA marathon that made me want to start my own and I’m anxiously looking forward to BOOM!’s prequel comic tomorrow. But while talking primates fans wait for that, I thought it might be nice to check out Scott Campbell’s version that also includes King Kong, the flying monkeys of Wizard of Oz, the primates of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Ro-Man Extension XJ-9 from Robot Monster.
Be sure to check out the rest of Campbell’s post too. He has a playground full of werewolves, a picnic with the Draculas, a floating bar for sea monsters, and much more.
- April 26, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Michael May
NBM goes digital with Dinosaurs Across America … and more?
NBM sent out a press release last night saying that it would be re-releasing Phil Yeh’s Dinosaurs Across America as an interactive digital graphic novel, and they are billing it as “a fully interactive version that may very well be the first interactive graphic novel ever published.” That’s a mighty bold claim, but apparently the digital Dinosaurs is more than just a comic that you read on a screen; it has been entirely retooled so that readers climb into a virtual spaceship and zip from page to page, clicking here and there to bring up information. (The original Dinosaurs Across America is an educational graphic novel that takes the readers on a panel-by-panel tour of all 50 states.) The book is available as an app through the iTunes store and as an ebook for Mac and PC via Koobits.
Perhaps this isn’t really the first interactive graphic novel—software companies have been doing something like this with children’s books for years—but it certainly is an ambitious retooling. Even more interesting is NBM publisher Terry Nantier’s comment, further down in the press release:
This is part of NBM’s fairly aggressive move into e-books for its graphic novels and reorientation we’ll be making more announcements about soon. Comics and graphic novels will always be in print, they’re too tactile and collectible not to be, but electronic versions are fun too. In this case, we see a fascinating magnification of the effect comics can have at making learning fun.
That should be interesting, because NBM hasn’t really jumped into the digital pool yet. They have a few graphic novels available via comiXology and comiXology’s Comics 4 Kids app, but that seems to be the extent of their digital presence, so a move into interactive e-books, or stand-alone apps, would be an interesting departure.
- April 26, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Bendis reveals the cover to Brilliant #2
Brilliant #2
Over on his Facebook page, writer Brian Michael Bendis shares the cover to issue #2 of Brilliant, the new series he co-created with artist Mark Bagley for Marvel’s Icon line.
The comic, about a group of students who “invent” super powers, kicks off in July.
- April 26, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
Creators battling cancer (and how you can help)
The Hero Initiative announced yesterday that in order to help artist Josh Medors continue fighting a rare form of cancer in his spinal column, they and Marvel have created a limited edition print featuring Medors’ recreation of the cover to Amazing Spider-Man #33. The print will be available at Medors’ hometown comic store, Packrat Comics (both online and at the physical location in Hilliard, Ohio) on Free Comic Book Day.
You can click the link above for more details, but The Hero Initiative’s Jim McLauchlin also sent us a couple of behind-the-scenes scans depicting stages in the poster’s creation.
- April 26, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by Michael May
Natalie Nourigat catches Catwoman and Batman the morning after
Cartoonist Natalie Nourigat has captured Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne in an awkward moment the morning after…well, we can only speculate what last night was all about, but it’s sure got someone nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
Totally love that Bruce Wayne wears Batman PJs and slippers to the grocery store as he groggily shops for melons.
- April 26, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Michael May
Graphicly expands to the Nook, but apps are hard to find
Nice book... but where is it?
Barnes & Noble’s unveiled its app store for the Nook Color e-reader, yesterday, edging the $249 device even closer to being an alternative to the iPad. And Graphicly was right there at the launch with three graphic novel apps Mouse Guard: Fall 1152, Wanted, and Irredeemable.
This is not Graphicly’s fault, but the Nook Color app store is not very well organized; they have cute headings like “Explore” and “Organize” but not “Comics” or even “Read.” Plugging the titles in to the search engine gave mixed results: The Mouse Guard app turned up alongside listings for the physical books. Clicking on the title brought me straight back to the generic Nook Apps page. I couldn’t find Wanted or Irredeemable at all. Maybe if I had a Nook it would be easier, but the website should be as well organized as the built-in app store.
The bottom line is this: It’s great that Nook is getting into apps, and it’s great that Graphicly was there on Day One. But if no one can find your books, no one can buy them, and unless Barnes & Noble comes up with a better way to feature content than this—vague categories and no complete listing of all the apps—they aren’t going to move many comics.
- April 26, 2011 @ 08:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | Bill Blackbeard passes away; Borders probes data leak
Bill Blackbeard
Passings | Writer, editor and historian Bill Blackbeard, widely credited with saving the American comic strip from the ash heap of history, passed away on March 10 at a nursing home in Watsonville, Calif. He was 84. A lifelong collector of comic strips, Blackbeard founded the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art in 1968, filling the garage and basement with thousands of bound volumes of old newspapers let go by libraries when they converted their archives to microfilm. His collection grew by the 1990s to 350,000 Sunday strips and 2.5 million dailies, which eventually made their way to Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. Blackbeard wrote, edited or contributed to more than 200 books on cartoons and comic strips, including The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics, 100 Years of Comic Strips and Fantagraphics’ Krazy & Ignatz series.
Numerous obituaries and reminisces have appeared since yesterday, most notably from R.C. Harvey, Tom Spurgeon, Jeet Heer, Dylan Williams, ICv2.com, and Dan Nadel, who collected a handful of tributes. [The Comics Journal]
- April 26, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Kevin Melrose
Bryan Fuller offers first look at Pushing Daisies comic
From "Pushing Daisies" #1
Almost immediately after ABC announced the cancellation of Pushing Daisies in November 2008, creator Bryan Fuller began talking about resurrecting the quirky comedy as a comic book. Over the next two and a half years since, he’s occasionally offered updates about the fate of the pie-maker who can bring things back to life, saying just last fall that the first issue “will hopefully be out in early 2011.”
Well, it’s early 2011, and there’s no first issue. But Fuller has offered, or rather tweeted, the next-best thing: a preview of the first page. He doesn’t indicate who the artist is, though.
There’s also no word yet as to when we’ll see the first issue, as Pushing Daisies had been destined for DC Comics’ recently closed WildStorm imprint.
Fuller has described the comic as a 12-issue series that ties up loose ends left by the show’s untimely demise as the characters deal with a flash flood that empties bodies from a nearby cemetery.
Check out the full page after the break.
- April 26, 2011 @ 06:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Talking Comics with Tim | Ben Towle
Oyster War Tumblr
On any given week, reading Ben Towle’s Twitter feed or Oyster War Tumblr or his blog, I tend to take away some perspective of substance. And that’s what prompted me to do this email interview with him. Rather than explain what ground we tried to cover, I prefer to jump right into the interview, after thanking Towle for his time and thoughts. This interview was conducted prior to Towle’s Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean being nominated in the Eisner Best Publication for Kids category.
Tim O’Shea: When you started on Oyster War, did you expect that “publishers [would not]… be beating down my door to publish this weird, not-all-ages mashup of 20s newspaper comic strips and obscure (at least in the U.S.) French graphic novels“? Or has that been an unexpected, disappointing surprise?
Ben Towle: As far as my statement about publishers goes, I should clarify: no big publishing house is beating down my door to give me a publishing deal with a decent advance. And no, this doesn’t surprise me at all.
I guess I’ve gotten a reputation as a naysayer as a result, but I’ve always been quite dubious of the (in my opinion, very Pollyanna-ish) claim that the graphic novel as a literary/art form has “arrived.” I think if you look at what GNs for adults have gotten deals from big publishers, they’re almost exclusively very specific genres—usually memoir with some sort of an angle (historical, grave illness, identity politics, etc.)—-and that’s not the sort of thing I’m personally interested in doing comics about.
That said, I’m optimistic that once Oyster War gets to the point that it’s, say, 75% complete I’ll be able to shop it around to a specialty graphic novels publisher and find it a home. It would be nice if we got to the point that there’s a sizable enough audience for adult general fiction graphic novels to sustain the “living from advance to advance” model that successful prose authors can pull off, but until then, I’ll just continue to do what I’ve been doing: produce the work that I love doing and which I truly believe in, and hope to find some success with those projects on the back end.
- April 25, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by Tim O'Shea
Law & Order: Criminal Intent targets Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
The troubled Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has been investigated by the New York State Department of Labor, lampooned by Saturday Night Live and savaged by critics. And now the $70 million musical is about to endure Law & Order‘s ripped-from-the-headlines treatment.
TVLine reports that an upcoming episode of NBC’s Law & Order: Criminal Intent will center on “a high-flying, fast-crashing show” called Icarus, whose director is described in the casting breakdown as “high-strung and larger-than-life,” and “a born-again drunk.”
However, while ousted Spider-Man director Julie Taymor oversaw the production when four actors were injured — a fifth was hurt after her firing — her television counterpart will be at the helm when a performer is murdered. Of course, Taymor isn’t the only person cast in an unflattering light (this is the Law & Order franchise, after all): The episode also features a rock-star composer named Arno who’s secretly bisexual and cheating on his wife.
There’s no word yet on when the CI episode will air. Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark — the real one — is on hiatus through May 12 while a new creative team, led by Philip William McKinley, makes sweeping changes to the show. Opening night is scheduled for June 14.
- April 25, 2011 @ 01:30 PM by Kevin Melrose
Comics Characters’ favorite musical artists
Karl Heitmueller Jr. has a great series of Comics Characters’ Favorite Musical Artists. The image above is only half of the fourth installment. You can – and certainly should – also check out Parts One, Two, and Three. Then come back and tell us if you can think of any great combinations that Heitmueller hasn’t done yet.
- April 25, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Michael May
Icarus on Robot6 pg 13
Icarus is a comic by Ryan Cody and is serialized here on Robot 6, with new pages every Monday, Wednesday & Friday. Comments welcome.
Ryan Cody is the creator, artist, writer, & colorist of ICARUS, a bi-monthly super-powered adventure/espionage book published through Super 75 Comics. Ryan’s past projects include illustrating the graphic novel VILLAINS for Viper
Comics as well as contributing to the Eisner-Award winning anthology, Popgun Vol.3, from Image comics. ICARUS #1 is currently available as both a .99 digital download and in print. For more information or to order a print copy of ICARUS, please visit www.super75comics.com
- April 25, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Ryan Cody
Skottie Young finds your lack of cute disturbing
If you haven’t checked out Skottie Young and Scott Morse’s joint sketchblog lately, you’re missing some awesome stuff. One of the coolest things about it – besides just some damn good art – is observing their different approaches to the same subjects. For instance, Morse had a very whimsical take on the Spider-Man villains, but I thought that Young captured the magic of Harry Potter especially well. And though Morse is taking a brief break at the moment, it’s going to be tough to beat Young’s Star Wars drawings – including this homage to VW’s Li’l Vader – when he gets back.
It’s not a competition and I don’t mean to make it sound like it is; I just find it fascinating to watch how these two fantastic artists think differently about these various characters and series.
- April 25, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Michael May
MoCCA in words and pictures
This is why I came to MoCCA!
With a cheerful crowd, a pleasant venue, and plenty of exciting creators and books, this year’s MoCCA seems to have been deemed a success. Both Christopher Mautner and I were there, and we decided that rather than write two separate blog posts, we would have a dialogue in which we contrast our impressions of the show. If you’re looking for a more comprehensive report on the show, check out the MoCCA report by our CBR colleague Alex Dueben as well as Tim Callahan’s writeup of his visit.
Chris: I’ll start: Was this your first time at a small-press comics show? I know you’ve gone to NYCC and several manga/anime related shows before, but I didn’t know if you’d been to something like MoCCA before? What was your general impression?
Brigid: This was my first time at MoCCA and my first time at a small-press comicsshow like this, although I have been to art shows with a similar feel.
First of all, I loved the locale. I actually used to live a few blocks away, so it was a bit of a homecoming for me to walk through Madison Square Park in the sunshine. The building itself had a nice, open, loft-like feel with plenty of rough edges—it felt artsy.
The show itself seemed like a giant, really good, Artists Alley. (I kept getting this feeling of deja vu because there were so many people I had just seen at C2E2.) The show definitely felt crowded, but never overwhelming. I made a pretty good circuit of the floor, but I felt like I missed as much as I saw, and I could easily have spent twice as much time there as I did.
- April 25, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson