2011 December
Miracles and superheroes: Some thoughts on Batman: The Brave and The Bold #14
House Ad for 1976 Ragman series by co-creator Joe Kubert
As miracle-based winter holidays go, Jewish Chanukah suffers a bit in constant comparison to Christian Christmas, a fact that has to do more with a coincidence of the calendar than with the importance of the holidays to the respective groups who celebrate them.
That is, Christmas is the second biggest holiday of the Christian year, behind Easter, and the one that has been most widely embraced by secular culture. For Jews, Chanukah is a relatively minor religious holiday.
The two holidays are generally forced into contrast each winter as they are celebrated around the same time, though, and Chanukah can’t help but come across as the lesser of the two, in a miracle vs. miracle sense.
The miracle of Chanukah, beyond the military victory in which the Maccabees defeated the vastly larger Greek army (Take that, Frank Miller and Zack Snyder!), was that the one day’s worth of oil they had to burn in the temple menorah burned for eight days.
Christmas has a couple of miracles for Christians, including a virgin birth, a portentous star in the sky and angels visiting multiple witnesses.
From an outsider standpoint, the Chanukah story has a lot more action, but the Christmas one inspires more awe.
Of course, neither the temple oil lasting a supernaturally long time nor a baby being born to a virgin and that event’s accompanying aerial phenomenon seem quite as impressive as this particular miracle: A magical suit stitched together from rags transforms the person who wears it into a superhero, granting him super-strength and invulnerability, limited flight ability, and, most, spectacularly, the ability to absorb the souls of truly evil people, transforming them into rags in his quilt-like suit.
- December 15, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by J. Caleb Mozzocco
Strawberry Shortcake gets its own app
Oh, the cuteness! Ape Entertainment has just released a Strawberry Shortcake app, based on the iVerse platform and featuring three of their new Strawberry Shortcake comics priced at $1.99 each (plus a free preview). The comics are a few months old, but that’s hardly going to matter to the core Strawberry Shortcake demographic; what will matter is that these comics are colorful, competently drawn, and full of lively characters and silly situations.
The big digital-comics news this week was that the publisher IDW, an early iVerse partner, migrated to comiXology for support of its apps. Where iVerse seems to be hanging tough is in the kids’ market—they also run the Pocket God app, and when I spoke to iVerse CEO Michael Murphey a few weeks ago, he said that their biggest selling properties were not adult comics on the iPad but children’s comics on the iPhone/iPod Touch: “Our largest selling products are kids’ products,” he told me. “Kids get the hand-me-down phones and iPod Touches. As they start getting the hand-me-down iPads after Christmas this year, that will evolve.”
In that context, a stand-alone app makes a lot of sense; Strawberry Shortcake is easy to discover in the iTunes store, and you don’t have to download a separate comics reader or create an account to use it. I do think some extras would really send this app over the top, though. A separate Strawberry Shortcake game app already exists, but it would be nice to see some puzzles, coloring pages, even music or videos, to bump up the fun content even more.
- December 15, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
IDW moves to comiXology, goes same-day print and digital
This seems quaint now, but it was big news in March 2009 when IDW Publishing made its Star Trek prequel comics available digitally on the iPhone/iPod Touch (the iPad hadn’t been invented yet, kids), and released the fourth issue the same day in print and digital. IDW’s partner in that endeavor was iVerse, and while the publisher’s digital strategy evolved over the next few years, iVerse remained as the provider for its branded iPad app… until this week, when IDW announced it has switched the provider of the branded IDW app to comiXology.
It’s big news, but in an insider-baseball sort of way. Readers who are already riding on the digital comics bandwagon won’t notice a difference. IDW started putting its comics on the comiXology digital comics service a few months ago, and when I checked iVerse’s Comics + app this morning, the IDW comics hadn’t disappeared. That isn’t surprising: IDW has spread its nets wide, putting comics on everything from the Kindle to the manga site eManga. So the headline on the press release is really just a change in the back end. What is really significant is that comiXology now has nearly a complete collection, providing digital distribution and branded apps for almost every major publisher except Dark Horse (which has its own app) and Archie (which puts their comics on comiXology’s Comics app but has iVerse run their branded app).
- December 15, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Frank Cho reveals the rest of the cover for Avengers vs. X-Men #0
Earlier this week Marvel sent out the cover to Avengers vs. X-Men #0, which kicks off their big round-robin crossover by Brian Michael Bendis, Jonathan Hickman, Jason Aaron and a slew of other big-name creators.
The cover they sent out by Frank Cho has a fairly large “A vs. X” logo covering up some of Cho’s artwork, so if you’re curious to see what — and who — is under the logo, Cho has shared the logo-less artwork on his blog. Hey look, it’s Ultron!
The #0 issue by Bendis, Aaron and Cho comes out in March.
- December 15, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by JK Parkin
Craig Thompson teases three new projects
You would think that having written a 600-page epic that everyone is talking about, Craig Thompson might rest on his laurels for a while, or at least go to Disneyland. But he’s already back in the studio, working on not one but three projects, and he has a snippet of art from each one on his blog.
All three have very different concepts and looks: An all-ages comic, which has sort of a magical look to it; a “nonfiction/essay-like book”; and an erotic graphic novel. “Habibi explores sexual trauma,” he writes. “This one’s to be a book with actual (drawn) sex.”
Thompson seems to be expanding his horizons in a number of different directions at once, and if all three of these come to fruition, he will have an extraordinarily well-balanced body of work. In the meantime, he promises to share bits of his progress as he goes along, as he did with Habibi, so we can expect lots more teases in the months to come.
- December 15, 2011 @ 08:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | More on Occupy Comics; New 52′s relative rankings
Occupy Comics
Comics | Matt Pizzolo discusses the Occupy Comics project, which raised more than $28,000 on Kickstarter: “The way the money is allocated is actually through the individual contributors. The artists and writers are all paid a proportional share of the revenue based on the number of pages they provide versus the total number of pages in the book, but all of the artists and writers are agreeing to donate that money to the protesters. Most contributors want to donate as a group to get the most bang for their buck, but they don’t have to — anyone can just take their share and hand it to the protesters at their local park if they want.” [The Morton Report]
Comics | Todd Allen compares the relative positions of DC’s New 52 titles in November with their September rankings; the November orders reflect the adjustments retailers made after seeing how the different titles sold in September. The results: Animal Man shot up by 10 slots, The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men sank by eight, but most titles only moved a few notches up or down. [The Beat]
- December 15, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Your Wednesday Sequence 36 | Gary Panter
“Jimbo” strip (1987), page 4. Gary Panter.
Smooth, even, uninterrupted flow is very often held up as the cardinal virtue for a sequence of comic book art. And most of the time, it is. Cartoonists are able to get around one of the fundamental problems of the comics medium — accurately depicting the passage of time — when they can create the sense that their panels represent a unified, unbroken section of time in motion, rather than single frozen moments put in order. But it all depends on what kind of comic is being made. In sequences where the forward thrust of the action isn’t the most important thing for the reader to feel, flow goes out the window, and other, more unusual considerations begin to play a greater role.
Most often, sequences that lack a definite sense of linear motion are atmospheric, establishing a sense of tone or place that eventually provides a background for more typical action storytelling. But on the page above, Gary Panter is up to something quite different. Atmospherics require extended exploration of a single theme, which is the last thing on Panter’s mind. Rather than spend the time taken up by multiple panels evoking a setting, Panter simply gives his establishing shot a vast amount of space, grounding his sequence with the single, nearly half-page sized panel of gloomy, cavernous sewer innards that literally hangs over the rest of the page. It’s the same trick George Herriman frequently employed in his panoramic Sunday strips: keep readers in plain sight of a setting and there’s no need to beat them over the head with it in every panel.
- December 14, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by Matt Seneca
Set loose The D.O.G.S. Of Mars
Some say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but martian dogs — well, that’s another story.
Over the past few months, a group of Zuda alums have released a new four-issue series titled D.O.G.S. Of War direct to digital on the comiXology platform. Described as a mash-up between space drama and Lord of the Flies with a big dose of horror, the series recently concluded online, but it’s not done yet.
Artist Paul Maybury is currently prepping the book for a collected print edition due out in 2012. In addition to fine-tuning the colors, Maybury is going back and elaborating on some scenes. Readers can go back and buy the original digital version for just $3, or wait til 2012 for the deluxe print edition.
Here’s a trailer a fan cut together (with an awesome David Bowie soundtrack) to clue you in more on the series:
- December 14, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Arrant
Cartoonist Dave Dwonch brings on A Crisis On Infinite Roommates
Mention the word “Crisis” to a comics fan and the next thing that springs to mind is time-traveling, continuity-bending, cape-wearing antics on an epic scale. But what if it’s all sent in an economy-size flat?
In Action Lab‘s Space-Time Condominium, writer/artist Dave Dwonch pairs Crisis On Infinite Earths with Three’s Company as one man tries to live with four alternate reality versions of himself. With a mysterious figure known only as the Gatekeeper pulling the strings like some sort of Anti-Monitor version of Mr. Roper, this guy — Griffin Griffins — has to deal with four more Griffin Griffins. (Four Griffinses?)
The upstart company Action Lab is releasing this as a limited edition book, with all 500 copies hand-numbered and signed by Dwonch. It’s the latest in the publisher’s “Signature Series” showcasing up-and-coming talent with their first major work on comic shelves.
- December 14, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Chris Arrant
Talking Comics with Tim | Bob Pendarvis
A Girl Called Ana Teaches Kittens How To Draw
Last week Chris Arrant covered former Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Professor Bob Pendarvis’ Kickstarter effort to fund A Girl Called Ana Teaches Kittens How To Draw. In today’s email interview, Pendarvis discusses his aim with the book, as well as Sugar Ninjas, the all-female sequential art anthology series aimed at drawing a spotlight on female creators. My thanks to Pendarvis for his time, and Tom Feister for putting me in contact with Pendarvis. His Kickstarter site gives more background on Pendarvis, including that he “created and taught the first comic book illustration classes at the Savannah College of Art & Design, going on to co-found their comics-based BFA and MFA degree programs (along with writer Mark Kneece and artist Bo Hampton).” If you are interested in helping Pendarvis with his Kickstarter effort, please act now–as there are less than 20 days left to meet the $15,000 goal.
Tim O’Shea: How soon after leaving SCAD did you realize you wanted to develop Sugar Ninjas?
Bob Pendarvis: Sugar Ninjas was originally a project I came up with to showcase the amazing variety of female artists in my classes. In the summer of 2009, as my official association with SCAD was coming to an end (on mutually acceptable terms), I decided to expand the concept of the Sugar Ninjas to include not only SCAD students, but also female artists and storytellers from around the world. All material in the book is copyrighted exclusively to the creators and the books are printed at lulu.com, each one priced at printing costs only—I don’t make a penny from any copy sold (although I encourage the ninjas to add sketches and charge a few dollars more). Volumes 1 and 2 are available right now, and a revised edition of Volume 1 will be back in early 2012.
- December 14, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Tim O'Shea
Three graphic novels return as apps
One of the great potential boons of digital is that it can bring back older comics at a reasonable price, without the problems of distribution and per-unit costs that caused them to disappear in the first place. Three examples popped up this week, while everyone was bickering over same-day releases of new comics:
Eddie Campbell announced on his blog that his early graphic novel Dapper John in the Days of the Ace Rock ‘n’ Roll Club is available as a standalone iPad app. The comics, a series of interlocking seven-page stories, were drawn in 1978-79. Campbell self-published them in the 1980s, and Fantagraphics did a collected edition in 1993. The app, which was produced by a Tokyo company called Panel Nine, includes not just the original run of comics but also the original small press covers, Alan Moore’s review of the comic (which started the ball rolling), and sundry other extras, some of which have not been seen in years. So it’s sort of a digital collector’s edition.
Batton Lash’s Supernatural Law is another vintage comic (well, from the 1990s) that is getting a new life in digital form. In this case, the comic is not its own app but is available via the Comics + and Graphicly platforms at a reasonable digital price: Wolff & Byrd #1 is free, and subsequent issues are 99 cents.
- December 14, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Two classic manga in the works from D+Q
Drawn and Quarterly publishes what I think of as “hipster manga” — artsy, bleak, literary titles that are as far as you can get from the boobs-and-battles genre titles that have teenagers clogging the aisles of bookstores — and they have two important manga releases scheduled for next spring.
The first is yet another Yoshihiro Tatsumi title, Fallen Words. Tatsumi’s work, which is in the gekiga (underground) tradition, is relentlessly bleak, and the publisher’s description makes it clear that this book won’t be any exception, despite the promise that it will be “whimsical.” The stories are based on the Japanese tradition of rakugo, a comical form of storytelling that uses lots of wordplay. Despite their wit, the stories seem rather dark:
In one, a father finds his son too bookish and arranges for two workers to take the young man to a brothel on the pretext of visiting a new shrine. In another particularly beloved rakugo tale, a married man falls in love with a prostitute. When his wife finds out, she is enraged and sets a curse on the other woman. The prostitute responds by cursing the wife, and the two escalate in a spiral of voodoo doll cursing. Soon both are dead, but even death can’t extinguish their jealousy.
Sounds like a regular riot. A little Tatsumi goes a long way, in my opinion. But I’m more excited about the other title, Shigeru Mizuki’s NonNonBa, a memoir of growing up with his grandmother in a world inhabited by yokai (spirits). This book won the top prize at Angouleme a couple of years ago — not the top manga prize, the top prize — and I have been hoping someone would bring it over here. This year, D+Q published Mizuki’s Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, a relentless depiction of the lives of soldiers in a doomed unit in the last days of World War II; despite the depressing subject matter, it was a great read, and I’m looking forward to seeing what Mizuki can do with something a bit lighter.
- December 14, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Marvel confirms Daken: Dark Wolverine will end with March’s Issue 23
Daken: Dark Wolverine #22
Nearly a month after Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso revealed to Comic Book Resources that Daken: Dark Wolverine would be coming to an end, the publisher has set March’s Issue 23 as the series finale.
The first-look X-Men solicitations on the Marvel website list double-shipped Issues 22 and 23, by Rob Williams and Alessandro Vitti, and tease: “Daken’s Terminal Disease Is In Its Final Stages. What Choices Will He Makes When Finally Faced With Death? Will He Die Here And What Will His Final Actions Be?” and “The Final Confrontation Between Daken And His Father, Wolverine.”
The son of Wolverine, Daken was introduced in 2007 in Wolverine Origins #10, before going on to play a prominent role in the “Dark Reign” spinoff Dark Avengers and becoming the lead in Wolverine, retitled Dark Wolverine in June 2009 with Issue 75. That series ended with Issue 90, only to be relaunched in September 2010 as Daken: Dark Wolverine. Although the title had a solid debut, selling more than 48,000 copies, Daken saw a steady loss in readership; November’s Issue 17 sold 18,794 copies, according to estimates by ICv2.com.
The end of Daken: Dark Wolverine in March follows the conclusions of of PunisherMAX and Black Panther: The Most Dangerous Man Alive, and the cancellations of Ghost Rider, X-23, Alpha Flight, Victor Von Doom, Destroyers, Iron Man 2.0 and All-Winners Squad.
- December 14, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
60 arrested in Canada in ‘Project Marvel’ gang investigation
The Marvels Project #1 ... not to be confused with Project Marvel
Sixty people were arrested Tuesday in a series of pre-dawn raids across Canada following a police investigation dubbed “Project Marvel” because many of the alleged gang members involved assumed the names of Marvel superheroes.
Unfortunately, neither the press release from the Toronto Police Service nor the report from The Toronto Star lists which characters the accused, some of whom are as young as 14, chose. I’m guessing there’s at least one Punisher, though, and probably two or more Wolverines.
However, we do learn that gang with the youngest members is Young Buck Killaz, which I’ll pretend is a reference to James “Bucky” Barnes.
The operation is being described as one of the largest ever in Canada, with more than 900 officers from 22 law-enforcement organizations simultaneously executing 67 search warrants across the country. Project Marvel grew out of May a robbery and subsequent shooting in Toronto.
- December 14, 2011 @ 08:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | Stuck in the Middle to remain in school library
Stuck in the Middle
Libraries | A committee recommended Monday that Stuck in the Middle: 17 Comics from an Unpleasant Age, an anthology of comics about middle school edited by Ariel Schrag, should remain in the Buckfield Junior-Senior High School library in Dixfield, Maine, after the mother of a student challenged its appropriateness because of “objectionable sexual and language references.” The local school board will make a final ruling in January. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom sent a letter of support for the book prior to the hearing. A school board in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, pulled the graphic novel from middle-school libraries in November 2009, but allowed teachers to continue to use it in class. [Sun Journal]
Digital | Charlie Sorrel looks at the iPad comic reader called, appropriately enough, Comic Reader. [Wired]
- December 14, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by JK Parkin