Kevin Melrose
The Five Fists of Science inspires amazing, working Tesla Gun
Rob Flickenger with his Tesla Gun
Inspired by The Five Fists of Science, the 2006 steampunk graphic novel by Matt Fraction and Steven Sanders, author Rob Flickenger did what any aspiring mad scientist would do: He constructed his own working Tesla Gun, powered by an 18-volt drill battery.
“You pull the trigger, and lightning comes out the front,” Flickenger writes on his blog, where he breaks down the process, complete with photos. “It is functionally inferior to that of Tesla’s design in the Five Fists in a few important respects. Notably, it is a bit longer and heavier than Tesla’s own. It also cannot (yet) create an ion wind strong enough to cushion the user when leaping from a four story building. On the other hand, my design is an improvement in two important respects: 1) It is battery powered, and 2) It actually exists.”
- May 15, 2012 @ 09:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Classics Illustrated debuts for Apple iPad, iPhone
After bringing Classics Illustrated into the digital age, and onto Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet, in March, Trajectory Inc. announced this morning it has teamed with Apple to deliver the enduring comics series on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.
Debuting in 1941 as Classic Comics, Classic Illustrated adapted such literary works as Treasure Island, The Last of the Mohicans and Jane Eyre, publishing 169 issues during its 30-year run. More than 120 titles are available from Apple’s iBookstore.
“Making the Classics available in digital form brings these brilliant works to where people live now, on their mobiles,” Trajectory CEO Jim Bryant said in a statement. “The iPad and iPhone are great for interacting with one of the most beloved comics and graphic novel series of all time.”
The Vampire Chronicles novelist Anne Rice also endorses the series, saying, “I remember reading Jane Eyre in the Classics comics and how much I loved the details and seeing the madwoman in the attic in those little panels and seeing the whole novel play out. What always drew me were very detailed, representational drawings, rather than something abstract. I wanted to see a lot of richness and a lot of depth.”
Watch the trailer and read the press release below.
Continue Reading »
- May 15, 2012 @ 08:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
First Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sketch sells for $71,700
The very first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles drawing, thrown together as a joke in November 1983 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, was bought Friday by an anonymous bidder for $71,700 at Heritage Auctions in Dallas. An undisclosed percentage of the proceeds will be donated to The Hero Initiative.
“What an incredibly exciting week this has been! The Turtles have been blessed with the best fans on the planet, so I chose this event to make available personal historical TMNT items for those really hardcore supporters – but WHOA – what a response!” Eastman, who consigned the sketch to the auction house, wrote in a statement. “My many, many, thanks to all the fans that have given me the best job in the world, and for their love for a great, goofy, bunch of green guys that just wanted to be normal teenagers – Mutant Ninja ones anyway!”
That 1983 drawing led the following year to the publication of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1, a black-and-white parody from Eastman and Laird’s Mirage Studios, that, with the help of licensing agent Mark Freedman, grew into a multimedia empire of comics, animated television series, feature films, video games and merchandise. Laird completed a buyout of Eastman’s interests in TMNT in 2008, and then sold the property to Viacom the following year for $60 million.
“For 30 years the Turtles have been a worldwide phenomenon, entertaining hundreds of millions of children and that influence shows no sign of slowing with the upcoming TV and film projects featuring the team,” Barry Sandoval of Heritage Auctions said of the sketch. “This is a piece of pop culture that will only increase in value and influence over the coming decades.”
- May 14, 2012 @ 01:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
First look at J.H. Williams’ cover for Batwoman #12
On his blog, J.H. Williams III unveils his stunning cover for August’s Batwoman #12, complete with the promise of an appearance by Wonder Woman, and walks us through his process.
“I felt it important for the image to work from a design idea properly, the logo had to become a part of the art directly, to play up the mirror effect as needed,” he writes, “so I embedded it into the final in a way that there is no other version. You’ll note I digitally did a mirror effect for Batwoman rather than draw that in by hand. I felt it best to handle it that way because of the Bloody Mary part is so bold. I think it would’ve been extremely problematic to have tried drawing Batwoman mixed with Blood Mary and then be able to have multiple effects in the final color. This allowed me to keep the style used for Bloody Mary independent from everything else. So the last digital additions, the use of a background setting, and the pop color of the inset stars and star panel against the surreal quality of the idea, helped to make this cover unique from previous Batwoman covers I’ve done. So that’s good, I’m always wanting the covers to do new things.”
All of Williams’ covers are beautiful, but with the one for Batwoman #12, he definitely raises the bar. Check out the full cover below, and visit Williams’ blog to see more of his process.
- May 11, 2012 @ 12:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Quote of the day | Stan Lee on character ownership, creator rights
“I’ve never been one of these people who worries about [that]. I should have been. I’d be wealthy now, if I had been. I always felt the publisher was the guy investing all his money, and I was working for the publisher, and whatever I did belonged to him. That was the way it was. And I was always treated well, I got a good salary. I was not a businessman. Now, a guy like Bob Kane, who did Batman — the minute he did Batman, he said, ‘I wanna own it,’ and signed a contract with DC. So he became reasonably wealthy. He was the only one who was smart enough to do that. [...] I haven’t had reason to think about it that much. I think, if somebody creates something, and it becomes highly successful, whoever is reaping the rewards should let the person [who] created it share in it, certainly. But so much of it is — it goes beyond creating. A lot of people put something together, and nobody really knows who created it, they’re just working on it, y’know? But little by little, the artists and the writers now are a different breed than they were, and most of them, if they create anything new, they insist that they be part owners of it. Because they know what happened to Siegel and Shuster, and to me, and to people like that. I don’t think it’s a problem anymore. They make much more money than they used to make, when I was there. Proportionately. Everybody thought that I was the only one that was getting paid off, but I never received any royalties from the characters. I made a good living, because I was the editor, the art director, and the head writer. So I got a nice salary. That was all I got. I was a salaried guy. But it was a good salary. And I was happy.”
– Stan Lee, in a wonderful profile at Grantland, responding to a question about character ownership
- May 11, 2012 @ 08:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Jonah Hex co-creator Tony DeZuniga passes away at age 79
Legendary comic artist Tony DeZuniga, co-creator of Jonah Hex and Black Orchid, passed away early Wednesday at Las Piñas Doctors Hospital in the Philippines after suffering from a stroke, heart failure and brain damage, GMA News reports. The 79-year-old artist was surrounded by wife Tina, his daughter Sheryl and his sisters-in-law.
“Tony is very smart, clever, and funny,” Tina DeZuniga told the website. “He is my knight in shining armor.”
DeZuniga was admitted to the intensive care unit in mid-April following a stroke, leading friends and fans to rally to help cover his medical expenses. On Free Comic Book Day, Filipino artists came together to sell sketches and T-shirts to raise money for the fund.
- May 11, 2012 @ 06:15 AM by Kevin Melrose
Jeff Lemire previews pages from The Underwater Welder
Jeff Lemire, the creator of the Essex County trilogy and Sweet Tooth and the writer of Animal Man, has released new art from his upcoming Top Shelf graphic novel The Underwater Welder. Announced in early 2010, the 224-page book is set to arrive in August. Here’s the official description:
As an underwater welder on an oil rig off the coast of Nova Scotia, Jack Joseph is used to the immense pressures of deep-sea work. Nothing, however, could prepare him for the pressures of impending fatherhood. As Jack dives deeper and deeper, he seems to pull further and further away from his young wife and their unborn son. Then one night, deep in the icy solitude of the ocean floor, something unexplainable happens. Jack has a mysterious and supernatural encounter that will change the course of his life forever.
Equal parts blue-collar character study and mind-bending mystery, The Underwater Welder is a graphic novel about fathers and sons, birth and death, memory and reality, and the treasures we all bury deep below the surface.
Check out the pages below, and don’t miss Comic Book Resources’ interview with Lemire about the end of Sweet Tooth.
- May 10, 2012 @ 02:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Avengers Vs. X-Men makes return visit to ABC’s Once Upon a Time
Call it coincidence, call it fairy-tale magic, call it corporate synergy, call it — all right, it’s definitely corporate synergy. But call it what you will, it’s bringing Marvel’s Avengers Vs. X-Men to the season finale of the ABC fantasy drama Once Upon a Time.
For those not in the know, the hit TV series centers on bails-bonds collector Emma Swan, who’s led to a town in Maine where fairy-tale characters have been sentenced by the Evil Queen’s curse to lead an ordinary existence with no memories of their extraordinary natures.
- May 10, 2012 @ 10:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Nominees announced for 2012 Joe Shuster Awards
The nominees were announced today for the eighth annual Joe Shuster Awards, which recognize the achievements of Canadian comics creators. Jeff Lemire leads this year’s list, with nominations in four categories.
The awards are named in honor of Toronto-born artist Joe Shuster, co-creator of Superman. The winners will be presented Sept. 15 during a ceremony held in conjunction with Montreal Comic Con. The nominees are:
Artist/art team
• Chris Bachalo — Age of X: Alpha #1, Avengers #13, #15, Wolverine and the X-Men 1-3, X-Men 7-10 (Marvel Comics)
• Marc Delafontaine — Les Nombrils, Tome 5: Un Couple D’enfer (Delcourt)
• Stuart Immonen — Fear Itself #1-7, “Queen, King, Off-Suit“/X-Men: To Serve and Protect #4 (Marvel Comics), “Say You’re Dead“/Outlaw Territory, Vol. 2 (Image)
• Fred Jourdain — Le Dragon Bleu / The Blue Dragon (Éditions Alto/Ex Machina/House of Anansi Press)
• Jeff Lemire — Jonah Hex #69 (DC Comics), “A Coffin for Mrs. Bishell”/ Outlaw Territory, Vol. 2 (Image)
• Yanick Paquette and Nathan Fairbairn (with Michel Lacombe) — Swamp Thing #1-3, Batman Incorporated #3, #5 (DC Comics)
• Cameron Stewart — “Chapter 1: The School of Night“/Batman Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes! #1 (DC Comics), Suicide Girls #1-4 (IDW Publishing)
- May 9, 2012 @ 12:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Introducing SpyGal, the first … pore-zapping action hero?
Marvel’s custom-publishing division has teamed with San Francisco-based Benefit Cosmetics to create SpyGal, billed as the “first-ever beauty-inspired comic book hero.” What does “beauty-inspired” mean? In this case, it’s that SpyGal, and her “wise-cracking, pore-zapping persona,” is based on Benefit’s POREfessional pore-minimizing primer.
Yeah, I don’t know what to do with that either, but it’s tough to pass up a SpyGal comic — “She’s smooth! She’s sexy! She’s your secret weapon against pores!” — by Phil Noto and James Asmus, available beginning this month at Benefit counters. Come on, it’s Phil Noto!
“SpyGal is a dynamic, nuanced hero for a new generation,” Marvel’s John Dokes said in a statement, “and combining that with the unparalleled storytelling of Marvel brings fans one of the most unique comics they’ll read all year.”
Check out the sneak peek, and full press release, below.
- May 9, 2012 @ 11:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Dark Horse offers FCBD titles as free digital downloads
If you missed out on Dark Horse’s Free Comic Book Day releases, the publisher is making all four stories available digitally through the end of the month — for free, naturally — via its Dark Horse Digital store and app for Android and iOS devices.
That’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer/The Guild, by Andrew Chambliss and Georges Jeanty, and Felicia Day and Jonathan Case, and Star Wars, by Zack Whedon and Davidé Fabbri, and Serenity, by Whedon and Fabio Moon. Dark Horse’s 2011 FCBD title, Baltimore/Criminal Macabre, is also still available.
- May 9, 2012 @ 09:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Quote of the day | The Avengers, and the importance of superheroes
“Take the character of Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson. Like the character of Katniss in The Hunger Games, she has skills you might not expect from her if you mistook her for what her unlucky Russian interrogator did—just another pretty face. Black Widow, or Natasha Romanoff, is a more complicated character than Katniss, though. Possessed of numerous languages, secretive, a spy from childhood with a ‘very specific skillset,’ she’s not all good, though she’s working for good now—she has, as she says, “red on her ledger.” Flawed as she is, as they all are, that only serves to make her more empowering as a role model. You can imagine a young generation of girls watching this movie and thinking they want to be like her, now fighting for good, able to take down aliens and bad men and get bruised and bloody but never give up. As a woman, she’s outnumbered in her gender (the other badass woman in the group is S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill, who gets fewer lines but still manages to escape and outsmart certain death over and over again while looking beautiful, as does Natasha). Maybe they’re pretty girls, but they absolutely get their time to shine alongside and on equal footing with the guys in a non-sexualized way. While they do wear tight-fitting black clothes that reveal their femininity (this is a big-budget movie based on a comic book, after all, and the dudes are wearing some skintight stuff as well), they are not considered “less” either by the men or by each other—or even, gender-equally so, by the villains.”
– Jen Doll, writing for The Atlantic Wire on the blockbuster success
of Marvel’s The Avengers, and the importance of superheroes
- May 8, 2012 @ 11:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Maurice Sendak, a giant of children’s literature, passes away
Maurice Sendak, the trailblazing author and illustrator whose books enchanted, inspired and terrified generations of children, died this morning in a Danbury, Connecticut, hospital following a stroke, The New York Times reports. He was 83.
Best known for his 1963 dark fantasy Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak defied convention, rejecting the innocent subject matter that marked saccharine picture books of the era and instead embracing sharp-toothed monsters, unruly protagonists and childhood fears.
“I don’t write for children,” the outspoken author said in his memorable January appearance on The Colbert Report (watch the two-part interview below). “I write, and somebody says, ‘That’s for children.’ I didn’t set out to make children happy, or make life better for them, or easier for them.”
- May 8, 2012 @ 08:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Three more ways to spread The Avengers love (and some money)
Earlier this week we spotlighted Jon Morris’ call for comics fans who’ll file into theaters this weekend to watch Marvel’s The Avengers to match their ticket price with a donation to The Hero Initiative as a “thank you” to the people who created those characters in the first place.
It’s a fantastic suggestion, of course, which led me to think of a few other options for showing some financial appreciation. Think of it as the comics version of trickle-down economics, or something:
A Buck For Jack: Launched last year by cartoonist Nat Gertler, this campaign encourages fans to donate $1 for each of the movies they’ve watched that features characters co-created by Jack Kirby. “If we could get just 1% of the people who see a Kirby-inspired movie to throw in that buck — and yes, 1%, as small as that sounds, would be a huge and unlikely success, I admit — that would be hundreds of thousands of dollars per movie going to the Kirby legacy,” he writes. The money collected through the Buck For Jack website goes to the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center, although Gertler notes that, “if I ever find a way to give it to the Jack Kirby heirs instead, I will start directing the money there.”
The Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center: If you’d prefer, you can donate directly to the Jack Kirby Museum. Established in 2005, it still only exists online, but the trustees are working to change that. The organization, whose mission is “to promote and encourage the study, understanding, preservation and appreciation of the work of Jack Kirby,” has established a Brick & Mortar Fund in hopes of finding a temporary “pop-up” location for the museum in New York City, preferably near the Lower East Side neighborhood where Kirby grew up, with an eye toward of a permanent home.
The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund: Familiar to creators, retailers and fans alike, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is dedicated to the protection of First Amendment rights of the comics art form and community. The CBLDF provides legal referrals, advice and representation, and frequently joins in opposition against legislation that poses a threat to free speech.
- May 4, 2012 @ 10:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Marvel sued by toy company over Iron Man licensing deal
Just as The Avengers arrives in U.S. theaters, a Los Angeles toy company has sued Marvel, accusing the company of committing fraud in a licensing agreement that went sour.
In the lawsuit, filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court and first reported by Deadline, Box-O-Mania claims owner Maxim Tselevich created a children’s playhouse in 2009 and approached Marvel about branding the product with its superheroes. Early the following year, the two parties allegedly worked out a deal for Box-O-Mania to manufacture Iron Man’s Lair Play Boxes, which would debut in stores in November 2010, coinciding with the release of Iron Man 2 on DVD.
- May 4, 2012 @ 07:15 AM by Kevin Melrose