2011 August
Good news for girls: Pat Mills is pitching a new comic
No glitter, no ponies: A Pat Mills story for Misty
Historically, U.S. comics have been geared towards boys, and until manga became popular, there were very few comics for girls—and even fewer good ones. The UK, on the other hand, had great girls’ comics in the 1960s and 70s—I grew up reading them—but those comics faded away, due more to neglect on the part of editors than a lack of popularity. Says who? Says writer Pat Mills, whose manly credentials are in good order (he was one of the creators of 2000AD and contributed to Judge Dredd) but whose first love is girls’ comics. Mills wrote for several girls’ titles in the 1970s, and he created one of the best-loved girls’ comics, Misty, which he originally conceived as a girl-freindly equivalent of 2000AD.
Mills recently talked to the Bring Back Bunty blog about his career in girls’ comics and his plans to resurrect the genre. Clearly, he gets it: Asked what comics have girl appeal, he responded
Girl as lead character. Although they may be unisex, there is an emphasis on the heroine. The objectives are different… a typical heroine wants to overcome obstacles to achieve some sport objective which provides some action. A typical hero for boys wants to kick ass and possibly destroy something! Okay, that’s superficial, but you get the idea. There are key differences as I found to my cost. Thus girls love mystery (what’s in the locked room?) boys don’t care.
Why can’t we have more of these? Mills says that girls’ comics outsold boys’ comics but were ultimately cut down by hostility from editors and creators; he contends that the desire to make “art house” comics rather than write good genre stories for mainstream comics doomed the category and left a gap in the market. The good news, though, is that Mills has been making pitches for a new girls’ comic, which will probably start out in digital format. If you’re not familiar with the richness of British comics, this article is a good starting point, and Mills, being a veteran, has some interesting insights into comics writing in general. As Bunty would say, jolly good show!
- August 23, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Fables: Werewolves of the Heartland postponed until Sept. 2012
Fables: Werewolves of the Heartland
Bill Willingham’s Fables original graphic novel Werewolves of the Heartland, originally set to debut this fall, has been officially postponed until Sept. 5, 2012, Vertigo revealed this morning. No reason was given for the delay.
Announced in 2009 at Comic-Con International, the graphic novel follows Bigby Wolf as he searches the Midwest for a new location for Fabletown: “In his wanderings, Bigby stumbles across a small town named Story City, that, amazingly enough, seems to be populated by werewolves. Who are they and where did they come from? They aren’t Fables, but they sure aren’t normal mundys. They seem to already know and revere Bigby, but at the same time they’ve captured and caged him – but why? Unravelling the many mysteries of Story City may cost Bigby more than his life.”
The 160-page book features interior art by Jim Fern, Craig Hamilton and Ray Snyder, and a cover by Daniel Dos Santos.
Fables #108 arrived in stores last week. The spinoff anthology Fairest premieres in early 2012.
- August 23, 2011 @ 08:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | Fantagraphics’ first Pogo collection finally goes to press
Pogo
Publishing | Mark Evanier, who is providing editorial assistance on Fantagraphics’ long-awaited Walt Kelly Pogo collections, notes that the first volume has gone to print. “My friend, the lovely Carolyn Kelly, lovingly supervised the loving restoration of her lovely father’s lovely strip and she also did the lovely design of this lovely book and its lovely dust jacket and the lovely imprints under that lovely dust jacket. Sure sounds like a labor of love to me. Not that the contents need any help but the strips are supplemented by a foreword from writer (and friend o’ Walt’s) Jimmy Breslin and essays/annotations by Steve Thompson, R.C. Harvey and myself. If I were you, I’d read all that text stuff after I read the strips themselves about eleven times.” [News from Me]
Comics | Todd Allen runs through some of the “actual changes” to the DC titles come September, noting the eight new (or fairly new, or returning after being absent) writers, plus four who have been “poached” from Vertigo. [Indignant Online]
Comics | Martin Wisse takes The Atlantic to task for publishing an “utterly dull and middlebrow” list of 10 nonfiction graphic novels they called “masterpieces.” He notes that when commenters call out the author for not listing any works by Joe Sacco, she responds that she “chickened out” on including Footnotes in Gaza because “the topic is so polarizing.” Tom Spurgeon has commentary as well, noting, “It’s galling that an author can admit to not including something for publication because they were afraid of Internet reprisals and not be automatically fired and/or laughed out of town.” [Wis[s]e Words, The Comics Reporter]
- August 23, 2011 @ 07:25 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
DC’s ‘New 52′ to launch big, with Justice League #1 topping 200K [Updated]
Justice League #1 has garnered initial orders of more than 200,000, DC Comics tells the Los Angeles Times, with another six titles from the publisher’s much-discussed September relaunch each surpassing 100,000 copies.
That figure will make DC’s new flagship title, by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee, the bestselling direct-market comic of 2011 — Marvel’s Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #160 now has the honor, with about 168,000 copies — and the first since January 2009′s Amazing Spider-Man #583 to break the 200,000-copy mark. (In case you’re wondering, that was the issue with the Barack Obama variant cover, which sold more than 350,000 copies.)
“Fan interest is huge — much of it positive, some negative, and some very cautious,” Gerry Gladstone, co-owner of Midtown Comics in New York City, tells the newspaper. The LA Times also unveils Jim Lee’s variant cover for Action Comics #1 and Ethan Van Sciver’s variant cover for Batman #1, both of which you can see below.
The sales numbers are the lone bright spot in an article that paints a grim, if not necessarily inaccurate, picture of an industry in which sales have slipped 7 percent this year alone. The relaunch is billed as “part of a two-pronged strategy to try to revive its moribund business and draw newer, younger readers” — the other prong is apparently the publisher’s digital initiative, but the story’s unclear on that front — but the overall tone of the LA Times piece reads “Hail Mary pass.”
“The truth is people are leaving anyway, they’re just doing it quietly, and we have been papering it over with increased prices,” Co-Publisher Dan DiDio says. “We didn’t want to wake up one day and find we had a bunch of $20 books that 10,000 people are buying.”
With at least seven titles selling more than 100,000 copies — retailers have until Monday to adjust orders on the first issues of such high-profile series as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and The Flash — DC will be able to trumpet “The New 52″ as a success, with the publisher dominating Diamond Comic Distributors’ Top 10 in September. Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1 could very well be the sole Marvel title on that list.
But to truly gauge the success of the relaunch, DC (and the industry) will have to look further down the Diamond chart to see how fringe titles that don’t benefit from mainstream recognition or marquee creators — books like Men of War, Demon Knights and I, Vampire — perform. Will the New 52 be an instance of the publisher’s top-tier books selling like gangbusters, while the other 35 or 40 struggle for an audience? And, just as important, where will those top-tier titles stand at Issue 4 or Issue 6 or Issue 12?
Update: The LA Times’ Company Town blog now lists the six other DC first issues that have have pre-orders higher than 100,000 copies: Action Comics, Batman, Detective Comics, The Flash, Green Lantern and Superman. None of those is a surprise, although Aquaman, with the fan-favorite creative team of Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis, certainly seemed like a contender for The Flash‘s spot.
- August 23, 2011 @ 06:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
Talking Comics with Tim | Laura Morley on Womanthology
Pretty much since the Womanthology initiative began, Robot 6 has done its best to cover it. A few weeks back, some questions came about how the money raised for the Womanthology project was to be spent and further questions resulted based on the response to the concerns. Rather than stand on the sidelines as the discussion played out, I contacted Womanthology organizers to see if an email interview was possible. Laura Morley, Womanthology’s project administrator, was willing to take my questions. Thanks to Morley for her time, as well as to Michael May, Sean T. Collins and Graeme McMillan for interview prep support.
Tim O’Shea: Laura, how did you come to be involved with Womanthology?
Laura Morley: I’m an aspiring comics writer, and saw the original tweet Renae De Liz sent out in May, seeking women to contribute comics to an anthology for charity. I hadn’t actually crossed paths with Renae back then, and saw the message via someone else’s retweet – I wish I could remember whose, so I could thank them! It’s been an amazing experience for me. Then, since I’m one of those perverse people who gets a kick out of wrangling spreadsheets, I sent an email offering to help out with admin for the project – from that I wound up coordinating the admin effort, which has meant acting as a first point of contact for our contributors and our Kickstarter backers. You can also hear me sounding British on the Womanthology Kickstarter video.
O’Shea: Can you explain how it came to be that there is a hardback anthology and a sketchbook associated with Womanthology?
Morley: Publishing a hardcover volume was the plan from the beginning. The book is going to be pretty hefty – it’s over 300 pages long, on a 9×12 inch format, and we wanted to make something truly elegant that would serve as a good vehicle for the beautiful work inside. The sketchbook came about, I believe, as an opportunity to showcase some more of the work by our creators. Some contributors preferred to draw pinups than full stories, and some wanted to do both; some writers wanted to share samples from their scripts – we thought this would be a good way to get more of it out to the audience it deserves.
- August 22, 2011 @ 05:00 PM by Tim O'Shea
See Amy Reeder’s Batwoman variant covers that won’t see print
Batwoman #1 variant by Amy Reeder
Amy Reeder, who’ll share art duties with J.H. Williams III on Batwoman, reveals on her blog four variant covers for the upcoming series that, for unclear reasons, won’t be published.
“We had it set up that I would do variants for J.H.’s run and he would do variants for mine (meaning, the main covers during my arc would be drawn by me),” she writes. “AND I got to ink and color these, which really got my creative juices flowing. It’s been a while since I’ve had that opportunity and I had a blast! So, I’d done four of the five variants, when I had found out that DC decided not to publish any variant covers on Batwoman.”
A second cover can be seen after the break. Visit Reeder’s blog to see more, as well as an unpublished Supergirl cover featuring the Teen Titans. Batwoman #1 arrives in stores on Sept. 14. Reeder’s story arc begins in February.
- August 22, 2011 @ 04:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Best Buy offers limited packaging, digital comics with Thor Blu-Ray pre-orders
Best Buy's Thor packaging
Marvel’s big summer blockbuster Thor movie arrives on Blu-Ray and DVD Sept. 13, and retailer Best Buy will offer “limited edition packaging” featuring the cover to Journey into Mystery #83 by Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott for folks who pre-order it from them.
But wait — there’s more! If you pre-order, you also get a one-month subscription to Marvel’s Digital Comics Unlimited … a cool little extra that hopefully will introduce folks who liked the movie to the comics.
You can find the complete press release after the jump.
- August 22, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by JK Parkin
DC’s New 52 art explosion on Twitter
Batman by Greg Capullo
The artists behind this September’s “New 52″ have taken to Twitter, thanks once again to David Macho, revealing a whole lot of art from the new books that are due next month. There are a couple of hash tags to follow over on Twitter … #52splash will show you pages of new stuff from Greg Capullo (above), Scott McDaniel and many others. And as Kiel noted last week, #thenewvillains hash tag that kicked off last week slowed down after last week’s push, but a few new posts have popped up today.
And speaking of villains, I don’t think anyone has shared artwork yet for the villain of the new Justice League title — who it turns out is one of DC’s biggest and baddest, Darkseid.
Check out more artwork after the jump, and watch the hash tags for more!
- August 22, 2011 @ 02:24 PM by JK Parkin
Grant Morrison on Mark Millar, Identity Crisis, Alan Moore and more
Grant Morrison
I really, really enjoy Grant Morrison interviews, even if they tend to arrive in bunches, with one entertaining Q&A sometimes indistinguishable from the next. He’s immensely quotable, peppering his comments with humor, observations of the holy-cow-I’ve-never-thought-of-it-that-way variety and occasionally surprising honesty.
This new interview with Rolling Stone is little different, with the writer discussing Supergods, the Action Comics relaunch, Alan Moore, Brad Meltzer’s Identity Crisis, and his strained relationship with former protege Mark Millar. While it may feel like we’ve read some of Morrison’s remarks before, others feel fresh, and even a bit brutal. Some highlights:
On his chances of encountering Millar in Glasgow: “There’s a very good chance of running into him, and I hope I’m going 100 miles an hour when it happens.”
On Meltzer’s divisive Identity Crisis: “He’s a nice guy. I have a lot of interesting conversations with him so I tried to focus on what I thought was good about it and there was actually quite a lot when I read it again. The first time I read it I was kind of outraged. I thought this was just … why? What the fuck is this, really? It wasn’t even normal. It was outrageous. It was preposterous because of the Elongated Man with his arms wrapped several times around the corpse of his wife. I thought something is broken. Something has gone so wrong in this image. [...] It’s hard for me to believe that a shy bespectacled college graduate like Brad Meltzer who’s a novelist and a father is a really setting out to be weirdly misogynistic. But unfortunately when you’re looking at this beloved character who’s obviously been ass-raped on the Justice League satellite, even saying it kind of takes you to that dot dot dot where you don’t know what else to say.”
On sexism in DC Comics: “There’s been lots of things, the sexism in DC because it’s mostly men who work in these places. Nobody should be trying to say we’re taking up a specifically anti-woman stance. I think it would be ignorance or stupidity or some God knows what. I was reading some Alan Moore Marvelman for some reason today. I found one in the back there and I couldn’t believe. I pick it up and there are fucking two rapes in it and I suddenly think how many times has somebody been raped in an Alan Moore story? And I couldn’t find a single one where someone wasn’t raped except for Tom Strong, which I believe was a pastiche. We know Alan Moore isn’t a misogynist but fuck, he’s obsessed with rape. I managed to do thirty years in comics without any rape!”
Needless to say, the entire interview is worth reading. There’s also a more involved profile.
- August 22, 2011 @ 01:45 PM by Kevin Melrose
Galactus, Devourer of Eyeballs
I don’t know what it is about Galactus that brings out the best in artists, but like James Stokoe before him, Italian illustrator Giorgio Comolo has taken on the big purple planet-eater with spectacular results. The reliably delightful Kirby-Vision blog has assembled a truly stunning Comolo Galactus gallery, vibrantly colored and maniacally detailed. Comolo’s artist page at Red Sector Art is worth a look, too, especially if you’re a MODOK fan.
- August 22, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
BOOM! Studios lets readers ‘vote’ with their dollars
Iowa may have their straw poll, but BOOM! Studios is going nationwide with an opportunity to let comics readers make their own choices—by buying comics from BOOM! in their Decision 2012 promotion. It’s a neat little stunt—they have 10 bio-comics about different candidates available for pre-order, and whoever gets the most orders wins the straw poll! The fact that voters will be enriching the coffers of BOOM! Studios is, of course, a small price to pay for democracy.
Being the intrepid reporter that I am, I found the press release raised more questions than it answered, so I fired off some questions to BOOM! marketing director Chip Mosher. Here’s what I found out:
Robot 6: Where did these comics come from? Are they Boom originals or were they published elsewhere? Who are the creators?
Chip: BOOM!’s a pretty collaborative environment. With this, the blame is on me. I’m a big political junkie and have been since I was a kid. I don’t know, I guess it’s a sickness. But anyway, I was reading an article one night and saw all the candidates lined up shoulder-to-shoulder and the idea just popped into my head. I brought the idea to the team, they looked at me like I was joking, then I said, “no, seriously!” And we were off to the races! So yes, these are totally new and original comics! Right now all that we are showing off are the awesome covers Jeffrey Spokes, but we’ll show more stuff down the road.
Robot 6: Did you have a Tim Pawlenty comic that you had to quickly kill?
- August 22, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Help Max Overacts bring his dramatic life to the printed page
Max Overacts
I’ve been a big fan of Caanan Grall‘s webcomics Max Overacts for awhile now, so I was happy to see that he’s now raising funds through IndieGoGo to release the first print collection of Max’s adventures.
On IndieGoGo, Grall details his plans for the book:
My initial quote (Which is almost the entire fundraising goal, plus some to allow for postage) is for 3000 copies of a 164 page full colour book at 8 x 10 inches. That’s only slightly smaller than the original artwork so the details will shine through! If we only make it halfway to the goal, that’s still good enough for 1000 copies, so everyone will get their orders. Please don’t be afraid of that huge goal! I’m not!
The book will collect the first 142 strips plus 12 exclusive strips not seen on the web, focusing on Max’s sister, Andromeda. See Andi at work, meet some of Andi’s band mates, and even witness the moment Jacob fell for her and she didn’t even notice him.
Plus, there will be an extra two strips if some daring fans step up to the 500 dollar plate, to have themselves put into an actual strip in this book itself, interacting with Max, Janet, Andi, Klaus, etc. Two awesome readers will be immortalized in book form for the ages! YOU will be on people’s shelves. In libraries! Beside home lavatories! YOU, yes YOU, may eventually be… in a dollar bin! *gasp* Plus… you’ll get to hang the original in your house.
Tim spoke to him recently about the strip, and I’ve already donated because I’d love to see the book on my shelf, so if you’re interested, head over there and check out the various rewards Grall’s offering for donating.
- August 22, 2011 @ 10:32 AM by JK Parkin
Relaunched Wonder Woman is ‘a horror book,’ Brian Azzarello says
From Wonder Woman #1
If you’ve been worrying about what direction DC Comics’ beleaguered Wonder Woman title might take with the September relaunch, writer Brian Azzarello offers reassurance that likely will either leave you screeching with joy, or clutching your heart.
“People need to relax, she’s not wearing pants,” he tells the Coventry Telegraph. “But it’s not going to be a superhero book. I can guarantee you that, it’s not a superhero book. It’s a horror book.”
That, of course, puts into perspective the solicitation text for the first three issues of the series, by Azzarello and artist Cliff Chiang, which has been sprinkled with … well, let’s call it foreboding. Plus, there’s the cover for November’s Issue 3.
However, if the idea of Wonder Woman as horror doesn’t exactly instill you with confidence — I’m intrigued by the possibility — there’s the insistence by Azzarello that this is a “soft reboot,” meaning he and Chiang aren’t jettisoning the character’s history. But more importantly, there’s his assertion that DC’s “Trinity” concept hasn’t really worked — “There’s Superman and there’s Batman and there’s everybody else” — but that it can.
“The first issue’s all done and we’re running right up to the edge, as far as what we can get away with,” Azzarello tells the newspaper. “We’re pushing the envelope with this one. I firmly believe that that’s what this character needs right now.”
Wonder Woman #1 arrives in stores on Sept. 21.
- August 22, 2011 @ 08:49 AM by Kevin Melrose
Arizona’s Atomic Comics chain shuts down [Updated]
Atomic Comics' Chandler, Arizona, location
Atomic Comics, the nationally known Arizona retail chain, abruptly closed all four locations on Sunday, shocking staff, customers and industry figures alike. Although the closing of the stores in Mesa, Phoenix, Chandler and Paradise Valley was initially announced last night by multiple employees and creators, owner Michael Malve confirmed the news this morning in an installment of his weekly newsletter titled “My Final Report.”
“As some of you may have already heard, after 25 years of running a successful business, sadly and much to my dismay, I have shut the doors of Atomic Comics,” Malve wrote. “The villain in this tragedy is the economy. I had hoped to be the superhero and triumph over the recession, but sadly the economic downturn of the past 5 years has proven to be unsustainable.”
In the newsletter, which can be read below, Malve revealed he’s filed for bankruptcy, and that he and his family are losing their home, ” as we had secured it against our leases which we obviously have to break.”
“I know there are many people out there facing very similar situations in these difficult times and now I can definitely empathize with them,” he continued. “I have always been and will forever be an extremely optimistic person and will look at this situation as an adventure. I have very high hopes for the next chapter of my life.”
- August 22, 2011 @ 06:37 AM by Kevin Melrose
Thank you for Booster Gold, Joe: Day three at D23
View from the cheap seats ...
I won’t have as much to say about the last day of D23 as I did about Friday or Saturday. We were late getting started Sunday morning, which meant I was late to the big Cup ‘o Joe presentation, Marvels’ first foray into the D23 world (except for the five minutes or so they had at the end of the movie presentation on Saturday, of course). We went to the arena when we arrived and headed for the cheap seats; during Saturday’s big movie bonanza, the place was packed to the rafters, but there were only a few people up on level three when we arrived. The sections beneath us seemed to be pretty full, though. Marvel Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada was wrapping up his presentation and getting ready to take questions as we sat down.
- August 21, 2011 @ 09:33 PM by JK Parkin