2011 October
What not to do on Facebook
This is not the Kodansha Comics Facebook Page
Some manga publishers do social media very well. Others don’t. Kodansha Comics took forever to even put up a website (and the one they have is pretty bare-bones—I think they just added a “News” section this week), and they told fans at San Diego Comic-Con that they expected to have Facebook and Twitter accounts by the end of the year—hardly an ambitious schedule. So an impatient fan has done it for them, creating a Kodansha USA fan page on Facebook, complete with logo and the note “I’m hoping if we can make a good fan page it will inspire the real Kodansha Comics USA will make one for them self.”
- October 10, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | DC, Marvel tease big announcements as NYCC looms
New York Comic Con
Conventions | The New York Post previews this week’s New York Comic Con in a pair of articles, the second of which focuses on announcements from Marvel and DC. Marvel’s “Cup O’ Joe” panel will reveal how Fear Itself, Avengers: The Children’s Crusade and X-Men: Schism tie together, while DC plans to reveal “the surprising origin of a longtime member of the Justice League” and more creators who will work on their New 52 books, in addition to Andy Kubert. Update: Presumably the Justice League member with the surprising origin is Wonder Woman. [New York Post article #1, article #2]
Comics | Not surprisingly, DC saw double-digit increases in September compared to the year before, but the overall market was down a touch as graphic novel sales, lacking this year’s equivalent of Scott Pilgrim, were down. [The Comichron]
Business | Disney CEO Robert Iger, who oversaw the company’s purchase of both Marvel Entertainment and Pixar, will step down as CEO in March 2015. [Bloomberg]
- October 10, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
NYCC | DC Comics reveals Wonder Woman’s father is …
New York Comic Con may not kick off for another couple of days, but DC Comics is already parceling out some of its big announcements. On Sunday, there was news that Andy Kubert will join Grant Morrison for two issues of Action Comics, and now comes word that another major change is in store for Wonder Woman.
The New York Post reports that after nearly 70 years, the Amazing Amazon will receive … a father. Warning: Spoilers!
- October 10, 2011 @ 05:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
NYCC | Archie’s Crusaders characters to return in digital format
New Crusaders
Fans wondering about the fates of the Red Circle characters DC Comics once licensed from Archie Comics can wonder no more — in advance of this week’s New York Comic Con, Archie has announced plans to bring them back next spring.
The New Crusaders by writer Ian Flynn and artist Ben Bates, will be part of a Netflix-like online subscription service offered by Archie and iVerse Media, according to an article in the New York Times. The service will offer an original six-page story and access to an archive of past adventures. “It will be a nominal monthly charge with access to new comics and thousands and thousands of pages from the archive,” Jon Goldwater, the co-chief executive of Archie Comics Publications, told the Times.
The new stories will feature old enemies tracking down the now-retired heroes (who live in the aptly named suburb of Red Circle), leading The Shield to head up “the next generation” of the team. Archie last published adventures of the Red Circle characters in the mid-1980s; DC Comics licensed them from Archie for its short-lived Impact line in the 1990s, then tried to integrate them into the DC Universe a couple of years ago. And again, the titles were short-lived. DC co-publisher Dan Didio confirmed this summer that DC no longer had the license to publish stories about the characters.
- October 9, 2011 @ 10:04 PM by JK Parkin
What Are You Reading? with Jim Gibbons
B.P.R.D Hell On Earth: Russia #1
Hello and welcome to What Are You Reading? This week our special guest is Dark Horse assistant editor Jim Gibbons, who I spoke to about his new job on Friday.
To see what Jim and the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below …
- October 9, 2011 @ 01:30 PM by JK Parkin
Shelf Porn | Bookshelves from Brooklyn
Welcome to Shelf Porn, the column that features a comic fan’s shelves. Today’s Shelf Porn comes from Greg Farrell, cartoonist and drummer living in Brooklyn, New York.
If you’d like to see your shelves featured here, have I got a deal for you — just send a write-up and pictures to jkparkin@yahoo.com, and we’ll make your dreams come true. As long as your dreams are to see your shelves featured here.
Now let’s hear from Greg …
- October 8, 2011 @ 10:30 AM by JK Parkin
Barnes & Noble cuts off nose to spite face
"Superman: Earth One" on the Kindle Fire
“regardless of the publisher, we will not stock physical books in our stores if we are not offered the available digital format…To sell and promote the physical book in our store showrooms, and not have the eBook available for sale would undermine our promise to Barnes & Noble customers to make available any book, anywhere, anytime.”
—Jaime Carey, chief merchant at Barnes & Noble
Well, those DC graphic novels that are going to be exclusive on the Amazon Kindle Fire color e-reader are really going to be exclusive now that Barnes & Noble is pulling them from the shelves in their brick-and-mortar stores.
We heard some unofficial mentions of this earlier this week, and today Publishers Weekly’s Calvin Reid got some Barnes & Noble reps to talk on the record and admit that they are pulling the bookstore equivalent of taking their bat and their ball and going home.
- October 7, 2011 @ 03:26 PM by Brigid Alverson
Kickstart My Art | Go Home Paddy
John Walsh has joined the teeming millions of artists who are looking to Kickstarter to provide a better life: He has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $5,000 to finish his webcomic Go Home Paddy, which chronicles the experience of Irish immigrants in Boston in the mid-19th century. Initial response has been good; as of this writing he has reached 37% of his funding goal.
Walsh talked about the origin of the story in an interview with The Boston Bibliophile:
I was in a Irish bar back home in the Bridgeport, Connecticut area and the bartender was an old school Mick who was lamenting the then current state of the city of Bridgeport. The bartender told tales of the Irish playing a large part in Bridgeport’s glory days. And then this crotchety old Irish-American bartender decided to not only blame Bridgeport’s problems on a certain minority group, but he also used a particularly offensive racial slur to describe this minority group. And I thought, “Why the Hell does he think it’s okay to say this to me?!?”
So while it’s historical fiction, Go Home Paddy is also timely, reflecting prejudices that still exist but are directed now against minorities and immigrants. Walsh depicts the Irish the way the Victorians did, using a “simian” style that makes them look more ape than human, then subverts that stereotype by telling the story of one individual and getting the reader to care about him. (I reviewed the comic here a while back.)
- October 7, 2011 @ 02:09 PM by Brigid Alverson
Robot 6 Q&A | Dark Horse’s Jim Gibbons on moving from marketing to making comics
Jim Gibbons and Hellboy, as drawn by Dan Hipp
Earlier this year Jim Gibbons, publicity coordinator for Dark Horse Comics, made the jump from the publicity side of the business to the creative, as he became an assistant editor for the publisher. Old habits are hard to break, though, so when he emailed me recently to suggest a few possible interview subjects he’s been working with in his new role, I thought I’d see if he’d be interested in answering a few questions about his new job.
We spoke with Gibbons, who is also a Wizard Magazine alum, about his move to Dark Horse back in 2009, so catching up with him again about his new role seems to bring everything full circle. My thanks to Jim for agreeing to answer my questions.
JK: When did you start working for Dark Horse, and what were you hired to do?
Jim: I was hired on as a publicity coordinator in 2009. In fact, Sean T. Collins interviewed me about being hired by Dark Horse for Robot 6 way back when! As a publicity coordinator, I was responsible for arranging stories (interviews, previews, artists process pieces, etc) with a number of different online outlets and just generally doing everything in my power to get coverage for Dark Horse projects both big and small. I was (Still am!) a massive comics fan, so making it my business to learn the ins and outs of numerous different comics and graphic novels in order to promote them properly was a pretty fun way to make a living. At a certain point, putting in a lot of effort to increase the amounts of online publicity Dark Horse was getting on top of my passion for these projects and comics in general gained me some recognition by folks like Dark Horse president/publisher/head honcho Mike Richardson, VP of marketing Micha Herschman, senior managing editor Scott Allie, editor Sierra Hahn and my old boss, the director of publicity, Jeremy Atkins and the prospect of moving over to editorial was put on the table. (A big, big thank you to those fine folks, by the way! Especially Scott Allie and Sierra Hahn—many, many thanks!) I excitedly confirmed I’d love to move to the editorial department and when the stars aligned, I was transitioned from one dream job to the next!
- October 7, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by JK Parkin
Borders crash sends bookstore sales flying
You don’t often get to do an experiment across the entire population of the U.S., but the Borders bankruptcy offered just that opportunity earlier this year. ICv2 notes that bookstore sales, which have been declining for years, rose 7% in the first half of 2011. Why the sharp turnaround? ICv2 attributes it to the Borders bankruptcy and the subsequent liquidation sales.
This was reflected in the September Bookscan top 20 graphic novel list, which included some older graphic novels, including Lucky in Love from Fantagraphics and the Seven Seas manga Dance in the Vampire Bund, that probably got a boost from those last-minute markdowns.
What I take away from this is that books are too expensive. E-books and online sites like Amazon have been eating away at bookstore sales for years, but apparently you can increase sales of print books in brick-and-mortar stores simply by decreasing the prices. Perhaps this is an oversimplified view of the situation, but I honestly can’t think of any other reason why the trend would turn around like that. (OK, there is one: The prospect of scarcity. People who are losing their only local bookstore might be tempted to stock up, but that would only be true in a few areas.)
From everything I’m seeing, sales of e-books continued to climb during that period, which suggests a tantalizing possibility: The market as a whole, print and digital, online and brick-and-mortar, could continue to increase, if only books were cheaper. Publishers set prices based on the cost of production and the profit they want to make, but readers have their own price points—I know I do—and apparently the two don’t match very well.
- October 7, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Artist Giorgio Comolo channels the King’s cosmic comics
by Giorgio Comolo
The Kirby Museum’s Kirby Vision blog points to a gallery of Jack Kirby-inspired cosmic artwork by artist Giorgio Comolo, and the results are pretty astounding. Click on through to check out several pieces, including some DC/Marvel mash-ups like the Teen Titans vs. the X-Men in the shadow of the Anti-Monitor vs. Galactus, Silver Surfer vs. Orion and more.
- October 7, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
Fourth Reich goes to the final frontier with Iron Sky comic
As if being the big bads in this year’s Captain America: First Avenger wasn’t enough, now they’re making their way to the moon.
Spinning out of the fan-funded sci-fi comedy film Iron Sky coming out next year, Iron Sky: Bad Moon Rising is a three-issue series detailing the history of the Nazi’s secret moon base from the year 1945 to the present day.
The Iron Sky team have put the full first issue up for free online but with the option to chip in some money if you’re willing. Those who do chose to donate will get to view the first five minutes of the 2012 film as a bonus, as well as the second and third issues. They enlisted artist Gerry Kissell (A-Team: War Stories, Army of Two) and writer Mikko Rautalahti (Alan Wake) to bring their story to life.
- October 7, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by Chris Arrant
Nike enlists Amanda Conner and Jan Duursema for new campaign
Art by Amanda Conner
Despite how well Amanda Conner might be able to slam-dunk a basketball, it’s her artistic ability that’s got her joining forces with Nike on a new campaign. Joining with Star Wars artist Jan Duursema, Conner has created a series of superhero-friendly illustrations promoting Nike’s women’s training line under the title “Make Yourself: A Super Power.” Here’s the artwork released so far, but we wouldn’t be surprised if there are some actual comics in the offing.
- October 7, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Chris Arrant
Quote of the day | Rob Liefeld on how to beat the ‘haters’
Hawk and Dove #1
“Yep, sometimes it gets personal. Case in point–the new Hawk and Dove launched a month back and to put it bluntly, it was the single worst reviewed comic book of my career. Think about that for a minute. The blogosphere came out with knives sharpened, grilling me on a spicket. This is one short month after The Infinite, a book I produce with Robert Kirkman had debuted to the best reviews of my career. What happened?? Well, I read a few of the reviews, the really hateful one’s and they were full of personal attacks and insults. Many, if not all, believed that Hawk and Dove was the first work I had done in over a decade and asked how I could still possibly be employed after all these years? I was drawing the third issue of a sold out comic book featuring characters that had not carried their own title in 20 years, do I let these attacks get to me? Sorry, I have no time and I have deadlines to meet, and arguing with any of these bloggers would accomplish nothing. DO NOT EVER send a negative comment or engage a negative review, its pointless and takes up valuable time. I advocate moving forward and servicing your fan base. Hawk and Dove has sold 50,000 copies to date, twice as much as my last Deadpool assignment. I should focus on the fans that enjoyed the work, not the dissenters who want to distract from it.”
–The oft-maligned artist Rob Liefeld, from a post on his blog titled “How To Beat The Haters.” The thorough post covers his thoughts on his early career, the birth of Image, Heroes Reborn, his three-year “retirement” from comics, reacting to message boards and much more.
- October 7, 2011 @ 08:00 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Jury weighs fate of Michael George
Michael George
Legal | The fate of Michael George was placed in the hands of the jury Thursday after closing arguments in the trial of the former retailer and convention organizer accused of the 1990 murder of his first wife Barbara in their Clinton Township, Michigan, comic store. Although a comic collector places George in the shop around the time of the shooting, George’s mother insists he was asleep on her sofa. The jury deliberated for about two hours Thursday, and is expected to continue this morning. [Detroit Free Press]
Legal | Manga blogger Melinda Beasi contemplates the larger implications of the arrest of Brandon X for bringing manga into Canada that authorities deemed to be child pornography: “What terrifies me about Brandon’s case is that each time we allow our courts or communities (any courts or communities) to criminalize comics (any comics), we are inviting them to criminalize our own.” [CBLDF]
- October 7, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by JK Parkin