2011 July
SDCC ’11 | Twilight fans stake out ‘Camp Breaking Dawn’
Camp Breaking Dawn, outside the San Diego Convention Center
As sure as the moon rises in the East and vampires sparkle in sunlight, die-hard fans of the Twilight series line up early for Summit Entertainment’s Hall H presentation at Comic-Con International in San Diego. But just how early? By at least one account, there were about 20 Twihards outside the San Diego Convention Center late yesterday afternoon, becoming the founders of this year’s version of “Camp Twilight” — or “Camp Breaking Dawn,” if you prefer. Within hours, that number more than doubled, with as many as 50 devotees eagerly awaiting a panel that doesn’t begin until 11:15 a.m. Thursday.
Even the most hardcore comic-book enthusiasts — those who travel hundreds of miles and lay out hundreds, even thousands, of dollars to get a sketch from a favorite artist, sit through panels about favorite characters and rub sweaty elbows with like-minded individuals — have difficulty understanding this level of devotion to Stephanie Meyer’s novels and the movie adaptations.
However, that doesn’t mean members of other fandoms can’t offer a little convention advice to Team Edward and Team Jacob. “Dear Twihards in line at Hall H for #Twilight on Thurs: It is only Monday” Jo Garfein tweeted. “Pattinson will be able to smell you in that 1st row. Deodorize!”
(Photo of nighttime at “Camp Breaking Dawn” via RobPattzNews)
- July 19, 2011 @ 06:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Quote of the day #2 | Tom Brevoort explains the difference between DC and Marvel
By its nature, the DCU has a more optimistic outlook on the world, and the Marvel U has a more pessimistic outlook….the DCU is Aaron Sorkin’s “The West Wing”–it’s not how government actually works, but it’s the way you wish that it worked, the way you’d like it to be–idealistic, passionate, energetic, spirited….But too often, DC seems to try to turn away from their core viewpoint, to make their characters darker or more dystopic or more downtrodden. And it just doesn’t play in the long run.
Judging from the comment-thread contretemps they always seem to touch off, everyone either loves or loves to hate Marvel Senior VP of Publishing Tom Brevoort’s publicly aired thoughts on DC Comics. Readers of Brevoort’s Formspring account appear to be no exception, judging from a recent question that asked Brevoort to expand upon his earlier notion that part of DC’s problem, as he perceives it, is their attempt to be more like Marvel rather than playing to their own strengths.
- July 18, 2011 @ 05:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
SDCC ’11 | Cowboys & Aliens take over the Hilton San Diego Bayfront
Hilton Bayfront in San Diego
A Robot 6 reader snapped the above shot and sent it over; as you can see, San Diego is being invaded by Cowboys & Aliens (oh my!). The movie, which opens later this month, is taking over some pretty prime real estate — the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, which is right by the convention center and should be seen by everyone waiting in line for Hall H along the shoreline. It was the site of the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World wrap during last year’s convention.
- July 18, 2011 @ 04:30 PM by JK Parkin
Mondo heads to the frontlines with Captain America propaganda posters
by Tyler Stout
Mondo, the art boutique of the famed Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters, sent over six new posters they’ll be selling based on this week’s big movie release from Marvel, Captain America: The First Avenger. Up top you’ll see the variant edition of one by Tyler Stout; you can see the regular one after the jump.
They also have two sets of propaganda posters, one set by artist Eric Tan and another by Olly Moss. You can find them after the jump as well. The on-sale date is as yet undetermined; watch their Twitter feed for details.
Mondo will also make its first trip to Comic-Con this weekend. They will be located in booth #433 and will release new posters, have artists signings and offer rare archival posters. All poster releases will be announced via Twitter with sale details — follow @MondoNews as they’ll announce new things each day.
- July 18, 2011 @ 03:30 PM by JK Parkin
Borders bookstore chain to shut down
Borders
As expected, the bankrupt Borders Group will be liquidated after it failed to find a last-minute suitor to save the 40-year-old bookseller, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The company announced this afternoon that it will ask a federal judge on Thursday to approve the previously announced sale to liquidators led by Hilco Merchant Resources and Gordon Brothers Group. Liquidation of Borders’ 399 remaining stores could begin by Friday, leading to the loss of about 10,700 jobs. What was the second-largest book chain in the United States will no longer exist by the end of September.
“Following the best efforts of all parties, we are saddened by this development,” Borders Group President Mike Edwards said in a statement. “We were all working hard towards a different outcome, but the headwinds we have been facing for quite some time, including the rapidly changing book industry, eReader revolution, and turbulent economy, have brought us to where we are now.”
Liquidation comes five months after Borders filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following unsuccessful attempts by the foundering chain to convince publishers and distributors to convert late payments into loans as part of an improbable reorganization plan. Late payments led some distributors, including Diamond Book Distributors, to stop shipping to the company. As Borders closed stores it continued to hemorrhage money — $132 million in April alone — and executives — 47 in the two months following the bankruptcy filing — while industry watchers started the death clock.
Early this month Najafi Cos., a private-equity firm that owns the Book of the Month Club, emerged as a potential buyer, submitting a proposal that included $215.1 million for nearly all of the bookseller’s assets, and the assumption of about $220 million in liabilities. However, creditors objected to the plan last week, setting Borders on a course for liquidation. Edwards held out hope for a last-minute suitor by Sunday’s bidding deadline — there were reports this morning of interest from Books-A-Million — but none materialized.
- July 18, 2011 @ 03:30 PM by Kevin Melrose
Quote of the day | Are comics like jazz, and not in a good way?
This week on Thursday’s Jazz Alternatives [on New York radio station WKCR] there was an interview with a member of the New York Jazz Initiative, an organization that holds workshops in New York area high schools to get kids interested in jazz. The idea is to have them play with professional musicians, and in doing so create a new audience for the music. Their plan is “to educate and inspire the next generation of performers and listeners.”
During the interview there was a lot of talk about how the golden age of jazz has passed and now schools are churning out jazz musicians with nowhere to play. There are more players than listeners, really, so a new audience for the music has to be created lest it become “museum music.”
I couldn’t help but think about comics while I was listening to the interview. This might be a new “golden age” of comics but what if the audience just dries up in the next decade or so? Jazz was dominant on the radio and in nightclubs in 1960, but by 1970 jazz musicians were running out of places to play. I thought, “What’s going to happen when all the comics shops close?” That won’t happen, you say? Well, they said that about record shops, too, and now they are just about all gone.
–Cartoonist and critic Frank Santoro, writing on the future of comics for The Comics Journal. Santoro is writing as a partisan of independent/small press/alternative/art comics published by entities other than large corporations, and as such I wonder if his concern is a valid one. From Peter Laird shutting down the Xeric grants for self-published comics to DC going same-day digital for its entire line, the assumption made by people all across comics is that the replacement of print by digital is a difference in degree, but what if it’s a difference in kind?
- July 18, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
Talking Comics with Tim | Lance Sells
Thwipster
Social media and e-commerce is ever-evolving as all of us can easily attest. In the past month or so, I became aware of Thwipster, an online enterprise with the slogan “Daily Deals for your Inner Geek.” The enterprise describes itself as follows: “At the core of Thwipster is a daily deal website that offers a little bit of everything for the person who loves their geek culture. Simply put, it is the daily deal site for your inner geek. We are striving to make Thwipster a destination that will make your quest to score the world’s finest graphic novels, toys, games and assorted geek culture items a more rewarding experience in a multitude of ways. We are also taking a very hands on approach to the selection of the materials we sell, so you can trust us to provide only the highest quality geek culture related items.” To better grasp the game plan for Thwipster, I recently caught up with Lance Sells, co-founder and director of Thwipster. In addition to discussing Thwipster, we also delve into his work in motion graphic novels (via Motherland).
Tim O’Shea: How did you initially conceive of Thwipster and how long was it in development before it launched?
Lance Sells: My brother Chad and I would talk on the phone and he would consistently bring up his thoughts about opening a comic store down in his area. He’s someone that goes to his local comic shop to hang out and talk where I’m someone who orders mainly online and have a pretty big interest in startups and technology. So from there we merged our interests, buying habits and tastes and came up with this idea to do a Daily Deal for geek stuff with a strong focus on graphic novels. As far as development time it was pretty fast from concept to launch. We talked mid-February and launched late April so it was about 10 weeks from idea to fruition.
- July 18, 2011 @ 02:29 PM by Tim O'Shea
Dark Horse teases three new projects they’ll announce Wednesday
Dark Horse Comics released the third and final teaser for projects they’ll announce on Wednesday night during Preview Night at the San Diego Comic-Con. Based on the last name at the top and the image, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that one of the three projects they’ll announce is a comic adaptation of Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s The Strain. But I could be wrong.
Unfortunately, the previous two teasers aren’t as easy to crack … check’em out after the jump.
- July 18, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by JK Parkin
DC to publish massive New 52 hardcover in December
Ahead of its solicitations for October, set for release at 2 p.m. PT, DC Comics has announced it will publish all 52 first issues from its September relaunch in a hardcover collection.
Due in stores on Dec. 7, the staggering 1,216-page DC Comics: The New 52 will retail for $150. Contents include:
• JUSTICE LEAGUE #1 by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee
• ACTION COMICS #1 by Grant Morrison and Rags Morales
• BATMAN #1 by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo
• GREEN LANTERN #1 by Geoff Johns and Doug Mahnke
• SWAMP THING #1 by Scott Snyder and Yanick Paquette
• STORMWATCH #1 by Paul Cornell and Miguel Sepulveda
• TEEN TITANS #1 by Scott Lobdell and Brett Booth
• And 45 more!
Check out DC’s full solicitations for October at Comic Book Resources.
- July 18, 2011 @ 01:20 PM by Kevin Melrose
BOOM! pits Fanboys vs. Zombies in new comic
Fanboys vs. Zombies
Plenty of zombies typically attend Comic-Con — whether they’re dressed as characters from The Walking Dead or simply love Marvel to death — but this week BOOM! Studios announces a new humor comic that pits Comic-Con attendees vs. actual zombies.
Per the press release, Fanboys vs. Zombies details what happens when a group of fanboys “find one of their greatest nightmares turned reality as San Diego becomes zombie ground zero. Armed only with the undead know-how they’ve gained from comic books, video games and horror movies, it’s up to one group of friends to navigate the Comic-Con feeding frenzy, and make it out alive! But will the zombie hordes be deadlier than they ever imagined? Can they save their friends along the way, and still make it out with some Comic-Con exclusives?”
The comic was conceived by Ben Silverman and Jimmy Fox of Electus. Silverman is the former co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios, as well as executive producer of such shows as The Office, Ugly Betty, The Tudors and The Biggest Loser.
“BOOM! Studios is the ideal partner for this initiative as no one understands what serves this audience better than they do,” said Fox in the release. “We wanted to create this for the real fans. The comic book junkies, the sci-fi nuts, the horror enthusiasts, the hardcore gamers–every one of them will be represented in our cast of characters. This is for any fan who has ever wondered what would happen if they had to play the role of the hero.”
- July 18, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
Viz website hacked
Viz Media
With Comic-Con just around the corner, the Viz Media website was hacked on Saturday, apparently by hackers who go by the handles Warv0x and Krypt0n. Warv0x has taken credit for hacking the PBS website and the Blizzard mobile server in recent weeks.
The first mention of the hacking seems to be a post on the Naruto forums at 4:27 p.m. Saturday. By 8 p.m. there was a note at the top of the forum saying “If you’re experiencing technical issues with the site, know that we are aware of them and working on it. Sorry for any inconvenience.” Neither the Vizanime.com nor the Vizkids.com site was affected, but the Shonen Jump site was hacked the same way as the main site. The site was back to normal by Sunday morning.
A post subsequently appeared at Pastebin.com stating that the site was hacked by “Warv0x & Krypt0n @ Virtual Luminous Security” and the reason given was “Krypt0n: THEY STOLE MY NAME OMFGBBQ.” The stated goal: “Pretty much nothing, just messing around with the box,” and they added: “We do not support defacing, since it’s really skiddish. Our one was due boredom.”
According to Wikipedia, Warv0x is a “self-described gray-hat hacker” who is currently in a rivalry with the hacker group LulzSec.
A screencap of the hacked site, which contains some offensive language, is below the jump.
Continue Reading »
- July 18, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
The Smurfs smurf over to comiXology
ComiXology smurfs another one: They will publish a dedicated Smurfs app for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch that will include seven full Smurfs comics. Like other comiXology apps, the app itself is free, and the comics are available in-app for $3.99 each; the corresponding print volumes retail for $5.99 paperback, $10.99 hardcover, so that’s a pretty smurf deal.
The Smurf comics are published by Papercutz, the all-ages imprint of NBM Publishing, and Papercutz publisher Terry Nantier smurfed the opportunity to point out that the little blue fellows started out as comics before they were animated cartoons. “I grew up with these comics, they truly are classics. It’s a shame that these books, which have been in print forever everywhere else on Earth, have been out-of-print for so long in America, which is why we decided to publish them in print and digitally,” he said.
Although you need an iThing to get the app and buy the comics, they sync with comiXology’s Comics reader, which is available for web browsers and Android devices as well as iOS.
- July 18, 2011 @ 10:30 AM by Brigid Alverson
SDCC Wishlist | Third printing of Our Love Is Real debuts in San Diego
Our Love Is Real third edition
Our buddy Sam Humphries sent over word that his recent self-published science fiction comic with artist Steven Sanders, Our Love Is Real, is getting a third printing that will debut at the San Diego Comic-Con this week. The first and second print runs of the comic sold out in less than a week.
Our Love Is Real: The Mineralsexual Edition , will debut with a variant cover (above) and can be bought directly from Humphries at the Geekscape booth (#4016) from 11 a.m. to noon each day of the show. And if you won’t be there, you can still buy it from the book’s website or through comiXology.
And you can also see Sam on the Indie Comics Marketing 101 panel on Thursday at 6 p.m. in room 8 — I know I’ll be there, because I’m on the panel, too. We will join Chip Mosher from BOOM! Studios, Laura Hudson from ComicsAlliance and Ben McCool of Choker, Memoir and Pigs fame to talk about how to market your comic, get the attention of comics press and that sort of stuff.
- July 18, 2011 @ 09:45 AM by JK Parkin
Don McGregor needs your help
Jungle Action #17
Clifford Meth passes along word that, because of family medical expenses, former Killraven and Black Panther writer Don McGregor has been forced to auction his collection of art from comics he wrote.
“I won’t allow art dealers to steal these from him,” Meth writes. “And I am not expert enough, despite the posturing, to know what these pieces are really worth. So here’s the deal: Some friends of mine and I are bidding on Don’s art while spreading the word far and wide. We are hoping you’ll beat our bids because we want Don to get top dollar.”
A rundown of the art, by such creators as Rich Buckler, Gene Colan and Marshall Rogers, can be found here. Bids are being accepted on McGregor’s Facebook page until “Don says, ‘I’ll take it!’” Meth also asks for any artists interested in helping to make “small drawings” of characters that McGregor worked on. “I’ll be the first bidder and I’ll bid generously… and I expect others to do the same.”
- July 18, 2011 @ 08:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | No new bidders for Borders; CCI sets 2012 prices
Borders
Retailing | A Sunday deadline passed without additional bidders for the bankrupt Borders Group, leaving a group of liquidators as the only suitor for the second-largest bookstore chain in the United States. However, The Wall Street Journal reports that the bookseller will likely entertain offers right up until Tuesday’s scheduled bankruptcy auction. The newspaper contends Borders was in negotiations late Sunday with Books-A-Million in hopes of striking a deal that would save what remains of the company, which once operated more than 1,000 locations. [The Wall Street Journal]
Conventions | Comic-Con International has released information on prices for the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con. Adult four-day passes will no longer be discounted compared to the prices of single-day badges; an adult four-day pass without the option to attend Preview Night will cost $150, while buying individual adult tickets for each day would cost $143. Adult four-day tickets with Preview Night will cost $175. Per the CCI website, “We hope that this change will encourage people to purchase only the days they will actually be attending, leaving additional badges for others who want to attend Comic-Con.”
Attendees at this week’s San Diego-Comic-Con can purchase 2012 tickets at the Douglas Pavilion at the Manchester Grand Hyatt; a 2011 badge will be required to purchase them. [The Beat, CCI]
- July 18, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin