2011 September
Wizzywig wraps up online; book to follow
As we noted last year, Ed Piskor has been reworking his comic Wizzywig, the story of a phone hacker and his escalating career of techno-pranks. He wrapped it up this week, and the comic is complete on his site, so now is a good time to grab a cup of coffee and read the whole thing. Piskor has a nice, clean style, and he has completely redrawn this comic from its earlier, three-volume incarnation, tightening it up considerably along the way and updating it to include references to Wikileaks. There’s a print edition in the works from Top Shelf, due out next year, and that should be worth saving your pennies for.
- September 21, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
DC’s push for the New 52: Batman, Wonder Woman and mental health
From Batman #1, by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo
With another wave of debuts for DC Comics’ New 52 — including Batman, Wonder Woman, Supergirl and Legion of Super-Heroes — comes another round of previews, interviews and assorted articles. Here are some of the highlights.
• Vulture previews the highly anticipated debut of Batman, by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, and chats briefly with the writer about the appeal of the Caped Crusader: “What appeals to me, no matter who’s in the cowl, is how Gotham City challenges them. Gotham is almost a nightmare generator, filled with villains that seem to represent an extension of Batman’s greatest fears. A lot of his greatest villains feel like mirrors: the Joker is who Batman would be if he broke his rule and fell into madness; Two Face is a mockery of the duality of his life. But what I love about Bruce in particular, and the reason I’m so excited to be doing Batman, is he’s a superhero that has no powers. He takes it upon himself to go out every night, punish himself, and be the best out there. To me, that is both incredibly heroic and exciting, but also really pathological and obsessive.”
- September 21, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Graphicly launches Facebook app for comics publishers
Graphicly on Facebook
Graphicly has launched an application that enables publishers to embed a comic on their Facebook pages. Called, appropriately enough, Graphicly on Facebook, the app is geared toward exposing new and casual readers to comics through the social networking site.
“Most of our users are actually new comic book readers who have never been exposed to comics before,” Graphicly CEO Micah Baldwin tells Venture Beat.
The free app, which features panel-by-panel viewing, full-screen zoom, commenting and network sharing, is now only available to publishers using the Graphicly platform. However, that’s likely to change. “I think we’re gravitating to a model that lets anyone use the Facebook app to showcase their work,” Baldwin says.
Graphicly’s stable of publishers includes Marvel, Archie Comics, BOOM! Studios, IDW Publishing, Top Cow and Archaia.
- September 21, 2011 @ 08:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | New lead in Michael George case; SLG’s digital priority
Legal
Legal | Authorities in Clinton Township, Michigan, tracked down two men mentioned in police reports by comics retailer Michael George after his wife’s 1990 murder who were never questioned. The judge gave police 48 hours to locate and question them. One of the men passed away, while the other, John Fox, will be questioned Friday about a family car that is similar to one seen near the comic book store where Barbara George was killed. [Detroit Free Press]
Digital comics | Heidi MacDonald talks to SLG Publisher Dan Vado about plans to release the company’s serialized comics digitally rather than in print. Vado reveals SLG’s popular Johnny the Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez will be released in digital format. [The Beat]
Comics | Lisa Fortuner notes that this week’s Green Lantern Corps #1 story shares a title with a Nazi propaganda film: “That’s a beheading, followed by cutting a woman in half, followed by the loss of a finger, followed by a reference to an infamous Leni Riefenstahl film. For those of you who are new to the Internet and it’s population of history snobs, Leni Riefenstahl was an early 20th Century pioneer who made inroads for women in the field of Evil. She did a Nazi propaganda film called ‘Triumph of the Will’ which to this day is still inspiring horror of authoritarian power in film classes and museums. It is probably not the best choice of titles for a book where the main heroes are fueled by willpower.” [Written World]
- September 21, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by JK Parkin
The Middle Ground #70 | If you hang around, you’re going to get wet
The seemingly extraordinary sales success of DC’s “New 52″ relaunch this month is the kind of thing that excites me as a fan (Hey, I love the DCU, I’m sorry), and makes me curious when the other shoe will drop. After all, the kind of massive increase in orders that DC’s entire superhero line is seeing has to have an equal and opposite reaction somewhere else, right? That’s just sales physics.
- September 20, 2011 @ 04:30 PM by Graeme McMillan
Game of Thrones’ George R.R. Martin makes his Marvel
George R.R. Martin
Talk about your harmonic nerd convergences: John Hodgman spoke with George R.R. Martin about Marvel Comics in yesterday’s episode of public radio’s The Sound of Young America. In one corner: George R.R. Martin, author of the epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire and its #1 New York Times–bestselling latest installment A Dance with Dragons, executive producer of the HBO television adaptation Game of Thrones, and inspiration for Dynamite Entertainment’s own comics adaptation A Game of Thrones, whose first issue debuts tomorrow. In the other corner: John Hodgman, nerd-friendly writer, comedic cultural commentator for The Daily Show, and “I’m a PC” guy, filling in as the radio program’s guest host. The topic: One of Martin’s first pieces of published writing, a piece of fanmail published in Avengers #12 in 1964 when Martin was 16 years old.
Hodgman used the letter, which entered wide Internet circulation a few weeks back, to kick off the interview. And he was probably kidding around when he asked Martin to explain why his 16-year-old self believed Avengers #9 to be superior to Fantastic Four #32, as his letter had argued. But once Hodgman jogged Martin’s memory by reminding him that Avengers #9 marked the debut of Wonder Man, Martin knew exactly why he liked the issue so much. His explanation to Hodgman is a solid exploration of why the early Marvel superhero comics were so groundbreaking for the genre — and in offering it, Martin seems to come to the realization that that issue had an impact on his own writing that resonates with him to this day. (For readers of the book or viewers of the show, the influence will be obvious.)
Read a transcript of the relevant section below, then listen to the entire interview.
- September 20, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
Quote of the day | Hey, even Deathstroke was surprised
“The bottom line here is two-fold: on the one hand, I feel like a lot of retailers didn’t take this seriously. It’s either because we’ve seen relaunches before or because they weren’t sure of the quality of some of the titles. I mean, there was essentially zero information. You had a cover and a creative team. That’s all you had to go off. From what I’m seeing, with people from pretty far away contacting us about books, I think some retailers just weren’t well prepared. On the other hand, there were some cases where there was no way to prepare. If you’d have told me last year that 50 copies of Deathstroke wouldn’t last me an afternoon, I’d have told you you were crazy. There’s no way to know. If you’d ask, ‘What’s your feeling on a Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. series?’ I’d have had no way to know.”
– Jermaine Exum of Acme Comics in Greensboro, N.C., on what the response to DC Comics’ New 52 titles reveals about the direct market
- September 20, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
The Incredible Hulk wears a Trojan
Fresh from its clothing deal with the Dallas Cowboys, Marvel announced this morning that it’s licensing such characters as Spider-Man, The Hulk, Wolverine and Captain America for a line of co-branded apparel for the University of Southern California.
The agreement was made through the Dallas Cowboys subsidiary Silver Star Merchandising, which in May signed a 10-year contract with USC for the exclusive rights to manufacture, license and distribute its sports apparel on campus and at its athletic venues. The Marvel Super Heroes collection will include clothing and hats for infants, children and adults featuring USC colors of cardinal and gold, as well as the school’s logos and Trojan mascot. The line will be available beginning later this month online and at mass and sporting good retailers, and USC bookstores.
You can see two more T-shirt designs at Marvel.com.
- September 20, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Food or Comics? | Trondheim, Wonder Woman, Game of Thrones and more
Wonder Woman
Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy at our local comic shop 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, and tell us what you’re getting in our comments field.
Graeme McMillan
If I had $15 this week, I’d continue to support the DC relaunch by picking up Wonder Woman #1, Legion of Super-Heroes #1 and Green Lantern Corps #1 (All DC, $2.99). I’d also grab the first issue of IDW’s new ongoing Star Trek book ($3.99), which adapts episodes of the original TV show into the new movie continuity, because I’m nerdy like that.
- September 20, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
Warner Bros. to debut Catwoman animated short, Justice League: Doom footage at NYCC
Catwoman
The New York Comic-Con is coming up Oct. 13-16, and Warner Bros. has revealed some animated plans for the show.
Warner Home Video, Warner Premiere, DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation will present “an action-packed hour of first looks” at DC Universe Animated Original Movies that Friday from 3 to 4 p.m., which will include the premiere of the animated short Catwoman, starring Eliza Dushku as the voice of title character. The 15-minute short will be included on the release of Batman: Year One, which arrives Oct. 18 on Blu-ray, DVD, for Download and On Demand.
The panel will also include the first footage to be seen from Justice League: Doom, the next entry in the ongoing series of DC Universe Animated Original Movies.
Panelists will include the voice of Batman, Kevin Conroy, DCU executive producer Bruce Timm and casting/dialogue director Andrea Romano … and quite possibly welcome a few surprise guests to the stage. An autograph session with the panelists will immediately follow the panel.
- September 20, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
Start Reading Now | Little Guardians
Little Guardians is a brand-new fantasy webcomic with a prince-and-the-pauper twist: While the guardian of the village is out fighting a monster one rainy night, his wife gives birth to … a girl. Since the guardian is a hereditary post that can only go to a boy, the doctor attending the birth pulls a quick switch with the village shopkeeper’s son. With only the prologue and a part of chapter one up so far, it’s not clear how this is going to play out. What is clear is that this comic is going to be a lot of fun. Unlike a lot of fantasy comics, it doesn’t have a super-complicated world. There’s a village, a guardian, monsters and a zucchini-obsessed farmer. In fact, there seems to be a zucchini theme running through the whole story right now. Ed Cho’s writing is crisp and funny, and Lee Cherolis’s art has a straightforward, dynamic quality to it that makes it easy to grasp visually. The comic updates on Mondays and Wednesdays, and on Friday the pair post an imaginative description of some fantastic plant or animal from the journal of Sir Thistlewhite III. With the zucchini festival on the horizon, Little Guardians looks like it will be a lot of fun, and since the story is just getting under way, now is a time to jump on and start reading.
- September 20, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Makeshift Miracle to return 10 years later
Makeshift Miracle
Jim Zubkavich, writer of Skullkickers, sent out a couple of teasers this week for Makeshift Miracle, a fantasy comic that was serialized online from 2001-2003.
“The Makeshift Miracle was a graphic novel serialized online from September 2001 through to March 2003. This month is the 10th anniversary of the first chapter and we’ve got big plans for celebrating that milestone,” Zubkavich posted on the book’s site. UDON published it in book form in 2006, and now a new webcomic will launch next week with art by by Shun Hong Chan.
Check out the second teaser after the jump.
- September 20, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by JK Parkin
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: From layout to finished art
IDW Publishing Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall has posted some interesting bits from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #2 at his blog, including the variant covers, a link to a preview, and side-by-side comparisons of Kevin Eastman’s storyboards and Dan Duncan’s finished art (colored by Ronda Pattison). It’s interesting to see how much the layout changes from draft to finished product, and also how dynamic Eastman’s drawings are — the figures are rough, but there’s a lot of energy to them, and they could almost stand on their own.
- September 20, 2011 @ 08:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Justice League #1 gets fourth printing as this week’s DC titles sell out
Justice League #1 (fourth printing), by David Finch
Out for just three weeks, Justice League #1 — the flagship title of DC Comics’ New 52 — is already heading back to press with its fourth printing. That, of course, means another cover: a modified version of the lampooned variant created by David Finch (see below). There’s now an apocalyptic-looking red background — somewhat fitting, considering Superman’s foreboding “Obey!” pose — and, more importantly, Cyborg. That’s right, Victor Stone, absent from Finch’s original cover, has been squeezed into the Justice League lineup, behind The Flash.
Along with the Justice League announcement, DC revealed that all 12 titles debuting Wednesday have already sold out on the distributor level, and are also going back to press. Even Red Hood and the Outlaws.
- September 20, 2011 @ 07:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Artist Minck Oosterveer passes away
Broken Frontier reports that Minck Oosterveer, the artist known for his work on European comics like Nicky Saxx, Storm, Jack Pott and Zodiak, was killed in a motorcycle accident on Saturday. He was 50 years old.
In addition to his work in Europe, Oosterveer also worked with Mark Waid on Marvel’s recent Ruse mini-series, as well as the BOOM! titles The Unknown and The Unknown: Devil Made Flesh. “I appreciate the condolences from all regarding the abrupt death of Minck Oosterveer,” Waid posted on Twitter. “He was a phenomenal talent and a good man.”
“Minck was without a doubt one of the wittiest, and nicest people I’ve met in comics or anywhere. I don’t believe it would even be possible to find anyone that would have anything negative to say about the man,” Renee Witterstaetter, who represented Oosterveer, posted on her blog. “You could only know Minck a minute and he’d have you feeling at ease. Like you’d been friends forever.”
More information on his life and career can be found on his website, and additional artwork can be seen on his deviantART page. Fans have been posting memories on his Facebook page.
- September 20, 2011 @ 06:00 AM by JK Parkin