2011 July
First look at the (new) cover of DC’s Action Comics #1 [Updated]
Action Comics #1, by Rags Morales
Just ahead of Comic-Con International in San Diego, the New York Post has unveiled a first look at what’s apparently the actual cover for September’s Action Comics #1, part of DC Comics’ line-wide relaunch.
Drawn by series artist Rags Morales, the cover is obviously different from the one that premiered last month, playing up action — lowercase “a” — rather than the iconic imagery of the original Action Comics #1. The art in the Post is small, but it appears as if the numbers of the police cruisers are “19″ and “38,” the year the series, and Superman, debuted. It’s possible that the earlier cover could be used as the variant; however, the solicitation credits that to Jim Lee and Scott Williams.
The newspaper notes what was already fairly clear: that while most of the relaunch titles, including Batman and Green Lantern, “will showcase DC’s iconic heroes when they’re well into their careers,” Action will dwell on the early adventures of the Man of Steel — during which he wore blue jeans, a T-shirt and a little red cape.
“We felt it was time for the big adventures of a 21st-century Paul Bunyan who fights for the weak and downtrodden against bullies of all kinds, from robot invaders and crime lords to corrupt city officials,” writer Grant Morrison says, building on his earlier description of the superhero as “a Bruce Springsteen version of Superman.” “The new look reflects his status as a street-level defender of the ordinary man and woman.”
Update: DC has released a larger version of Morales’ cover, along with additional details about Action Comics and Superman, confirming earlier reports that Clark Kent and Lois Lane aren’t married in the New DCU: “Clark Kent is single and living on his own. He has never been married. [...] Lois Lane is dating a colleague at the DAILY PLANET (and his name isn’t Clark Kent) and she has a new position with the paper.” Read the rest after the break.
- July 18, 2011 @ 05:18 AM by Kevin Melrose
What Are You Reading? with Chris Butcher
Casanova: Avarita #1
Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading? Our special guest today is Chris Butcher.
Butcher is the manager of The Beguiling in Toronto and founder of The Toronto Comic Arts Festival. He’ll be at the UDON Booth #5037 and The Beguiling Original Art Sales Booth #1629 at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend.
To see what Chris and the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below …
- July 17, 2011 @ 02:30 PM by JK Parkin
DC Comics teams with National CineMedia for movie theater advertising
DC Comics shared some specifics on one element of their plans to market the DC relaunch to the non-comic reading audience, as they told comic retailers about a partnership with National CineMedia.
Per the email sent to retailers last week, NCM will create a 30-second advertisement for DC Comics – The New 52. Each spot will be customized to include information on a local store. “We urge retailers to take advantage of our 75-percent special event co-op reimbursement to get the word out to both new and lapsed readers in their areas,” said Bob Wayne, senior vice president of sales, DC Entertainment. Ads will run between Aug. 31 and Sept. 30.
You can find the complete announcement after the jump.
- July 17, 2011 @ 09:39 AM by JK Parkin
Shelf Porn | Bags, boards and Captain America video games
Hello and welcome to Shelf Porn. Today’s submission comes from Neal Bishop from North Carolina, who shares his collection of toys, comics and more.
If you’d like to see your shelves featured here, just drop me an email at jkparkin@yahoo.com.
And now here’s Neal …
- July 16, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
SDCC ’11 | Cirque du Soleil brings KÀ to San Diego
KÀ
KÀ, the Cirque du Soleil production that lives at the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas, is leaving Sin City for a night and heading to San Diego. Performers will turn PETCO Park into “a display of dazzling 3-D projections created especially for Comic-Con,” as they perform on a wall outside the park.
The event is free and starts at approximately 9:30 p.m. Thursday, July 21. You’ll find the complete details after the jump.
- July 16, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by JK Parkin
SDCC Wishlist | Flashpoint, Devastator, Hero Initiative and more
Flashpoint
The San Diego Comic-Con kicks off with a preview night on July 20, then runs July 21-24. If you are a comics creator or publisher, and you’re planning to bring something new to the con — a sketchbook, a print, a graphic novel debut, anything! — then we want to hear from you. Drop me an email (before Wednesday!) and let me know if you’ll have something cool on hand that attendees should know about. Feel free to send any artwork as well.
In addition to the portfolio of DC relaunch covers I mentioned this past week, Graphitti Designs will also sell a variant cover edition of Flashpoint #1 at their booth during the show.
- July 16, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by JK Parkin
SDCC Wishlist | Squirrelpool. Squirrelpool?
Squirrelpool
There’s Deadpool, Lady Deadpool, The Deadpool Kid, Dogpool, Kidpool, even Hulkpool … so why not Squirrelpool? Marvel’s Ryan Penagos, a.k.a. Agent M, shares that statue maker Gentle Giant will sell a limited edition statue of Squirrelpool, whose first and possibly only appearance was on a variant cover for Thor #607.
You can buy them at the Gentle Giant booth, #3513. They are limited to 500 pieces and will sell for $30.
- July 16, 2011 @ 08:00 AM by JK Parkin
SDCC ’10 | Archie’s panel and booth schedule
Archie & Friends 156
Archie Comics sent over their booth and panel schedule for the con, promising “to make a number of major, game-changing announcements in the days leading up to and during the convention.” You can find their announcement below …
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After months of unprecedented media attention, major initiatives, character debuts and stories and artwork that stand among the best in the company’s history, Archie Comics is ready to storm San Diego – and kick things into even higher gear.
In addition to major topics like Archie’s forward-looking and innovative digital presence, LIFE WITH ARCHIE MAGAZINE, the success of MEGA MAN and SONIC, the sales powerhouse that is KEVIN KELLER’s own series and the company’s first original graphic novel, ARCHIE BABIES, the company is prepared to make a number of major, game-changing announcements in the days leading up to and during the convention, which is the premiere pop culture event of the year. We hope to see you there, or following along with us via our official Facebook page or Twitter.
- July 16, 2011 @ 07:00 AM by JK Parkin
Xeric Foundation to offer one last round of grants to creators
Since its inception in 1992, the Xeric Foundation has given out over $2,500,000 worth of grants to help independent comics artists get their work into print. But now it’s coming to an end.
Founder Peter Laird (the co-creator of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) posted a message on the foundation’s website saying that the world has changed, and it’s time for the Xeric Foundation to change as well:
The advent of essentially free web publishing has forever altered the way aspiring comic book creators can get their work out into the public eye. With this in mind, I have decided that it makes sense that the Xeric Foundation will no longer provide grants to self-publishing comic book creators, and instead devote all of its available grants funds to charitable organizations.
However, aspiring creators do have one last chance: The foundation will award one last round of grants, with work being reviewed in May 2012.
The most recent Xeric award winners were announced in February.
(via Comics Worth Reading)
- July 15, 2011 @ 08:12 PM by Brigid Alverson
Preview: Archie’s Weird Mysteries
Let’s take a break from the mid-July Comic-Con madness and get into a Halloween mood! Archie’s Weird Mysteries is an Archie trade paperback that compiles stories from the comic of the same name, which was based on the animated Archie’s Weird Mysteries series—writer Paul Castiglia explains the relationship between the comic and the cartoon on his blog, and in a 2009 interview he discusses the challenges of writing Archie horror comics. Of course, this is Riverdale, so the horror is pretty lite. Really, they are just having fun with the conventions of the genre.
Anyway, enjoy a couple of pages of Betty being mildly terrorized after the jump. The book arrives in comics shops next week.
- July 15, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
SDCC ’11 | Disney to unveil Marvel Press imprint at San Diego
Disney Publishing Worldwide will be in San Diego next weekend to unveil Marvel Press, a new line of children’s books based in the Marvel Universe. It looks like these will not be comics but “picture books, chapter books, novels, and storybooks”—there’s a bit of redundancy in that statement. The line will be featured in the Disney/Marvel Team Up panel at 3 p.m. on Sunday, with Marvel and Disney editors showing off their Marvel Origin Storybooks line. (The Disney press release makes this sound like breaking news, but the first three books are already available in stores.)
Disney will also be showing off their Disney Comics iOS app and they will have heaps of plain ol’ books at their booth (#1016), including limited quantities of upcoming releases. There will be giveaways: Phineas and Ferb masks and magazines, Rick Riordan Heroes of Olympus pens, and more. Filmmaker and author Don Hahn will be giving a panel on “Why We Create” and also signing copies of Brain Storm and The Alchemy Animation, and illustrator Joey Chou will also be there to sign his picture book It’s a Small World.
- July 15, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Seven Seas to go digital-first with My Boyfriend Is a Vampire
“Digital-first, followed by print, is the wave of the future for all publishing.”
That categorical statement was made not by a digital distributor wannabe but by Seven Seas publisher Jason DeAngelis, who was announcing the digital-first release of My Boyfriend Is a Vampire. The first volume went up on the Kindle store this week; the print edition will reach stores in October.
Digital manga is becoming more and more common, on both the web and handhelds, but Seven Seas was putting substantial chunks of their homegrown OEL manga online years ago—I talked to Seven Seas editor Adam Arnold about their use of webcomics to promote their print manga way back in ’08.
Interestingly, Seven Seas has chosen not to go with a digital comics app but are selling Boyfriend (which was originally published in Korea, so technically it’s manhwa, not manga) as a book on the iBooks, Kindle, and Nook stores. And they are changing up the format, although digital is still substantially cheaper: A 158-page digital volume is $4.99, but the print edition is a 320-page omnibus retailing at $15.99. On the other hand, you’re more likely to get a discount on the print edition (yup, Amazon has it listed at $10.87).
I can’t possibly do justice to the solicit text for this book, by the way, so I’ll just post it after the jump.
- July 15, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Collect this now! The New Adventures of Hitler
The New Adventures of Hitler
The imminent arrival of Flex Mentallo — a comic book few old-school Vertigo readers (myself included) ever expected to see collected in a fancy-dress trade — has heartened Grant Morrison fans and lovers of lost comic causes everywhere. If that comic can finally see the day, perhaps there’s hope for all sorts of beloved but forelorn projects. With that in mind then, let me present to you another Grant Morrison comic that has lingered unfairly in obscurity ever since its The New Adventures of Hitler.
Lest you think that title is some sort of ironic joke or that the book doesn’t actually involve the person mentioned in the title, much in the same way Joyce’s Ulysses isn’t about the Greek hero (at least not on the surface) let me assure you, this is a comic book about the Adolf Hiter.
- July 15, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Chris Mautner
SDCC Wishlist | Ultra-limited Fables print puts the spotlight on Bufkin
Bufkin the Hero
If you read Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham’s work on Fables, you know the real star of the show isn’t Bigby or Boy Blue or even Flycatcher — it’s the little winged monkey Bufkin. Buckingham captures his majesty in the above print, which has a very small print run for a very small hero.
Only 25 were created, and five of them will be given away to the winners of the Hero Initiative‘s “Meet Willingham and Bucky on the yacht” auctions. Five fans will get to chat with the duo about Fables, get the print and ask one question that the creators will answer with “no hokum, no equivocation, no bush-beating and no balderdash.”
Another five will be given away at the Fables panel at the San Diego Comic-Con to the folks who ask the five best questions. How the remaining 15 will be distributed has yet to be determined, according to the Hero Initiative’s Jim McLauchlin.
- July 15, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
GameStop slings pre-order costumes for Spider-Man: Edge of Time, X-Men: Destiny
If you’re planning to buy the upcoming Marvel video games Spider-Man: Edge of Time or X-Men: Destiny, you may want to consider pre-ordering them from GameStop if you have an affinity for the Slingers or Havok.
The in-game Havok suit, according to Marvel.com, will allow X-Men: Destiny players to not only dress up their mutant in Alex Summers’ suit, but also allow them to “equip the exclusive Havok X-gene to their mutant of choice, granting them plasma-based power enhancements to their attacks, the ability to stun enemies through energy absorption and increase their damage output over time!”
And in Spider-Man: Edge of Time, the GameStop bonus gives you access to four different costumes for Spider-Man — those used by Peter Parker during the “Identity Crisis” storyline circa the late 1990s. Since Spider-Man was wanted for murder, Parker started using four other secret identities that he abandoned after clearing his name — Hornet, Prodigy, Ricochet and Dusk. The costumes were eventually claimed by four young heroes who took up crime fighting.
Per Marvel.com, players “will be able to take full advantage of the four exclusive suits from this storyline–Dusk, Prodigy, Ricochet and Hornet–which will give our web-slinger increases in health, damage, health regeneration or shield regeneration.”
Check out closer looks at all the suits after the jump.
- July 15, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by JK Parkin