Comic Book Resources

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Green Lantern Corps #41

Publishing | Buoyed by its Blackest Night miniseries and tie-in books, DC Comics claimed the first six slots on Diamond Comic Distributors' Top 300 list of books sold to the direct market in October.

It's a rare occurrence, to be sure, but just how rare? Charts-watcher John Jackson Miller contends we have to travel back more than 40 years, to a time well before the direct market, to find when DC last had the six best-selling comics (as sold to retailers). Yes, 1968. The closest DC came in the direct-market era, according to Miller, was in April 1993, when the publisher held the top five positions.

But back to October 2009, when DC also narrowed the market gap with Marvel to the closest margin in some time: The competitors were separated by just 2.43 percent in unit share, and 2.68 percent in dollar share. [Diamond Comic Distributors, The Comics Chronicles]

Retailing | Borders Group announced Thursday it will close about 200 of its Waldenbooks, Borders Express and Borders Outlet stores in January. The retail chain has been steadily closing mall-based stores in its Waldenbooks Specialty Retail division since 2001. About 130 mall stores will remain once the downsizing is complete. [Publishers Weekly]

Continue Reading »

Straight for the art | Monster Mashups

Monster Mashups

Dean Haspiel points us to Monster Mashups, a collaboration between Tim Hall and Jen Ferguson "depicting the lesser known aspects of some of the most notorious creatures in the Western lexicon of horror." Haspiel says:

Tim Hall (writer) and Jen Ferguson (artist) began collaborating late in the summer of 2009, when Tim became aware of Jen’s peculiar art and vice-versa: a working friendship was born. Tim Hall had begun “Uplift the Positivicals,” a new “comic without comics” (somewhat like Hazel Motes’ “Church of Christ Without Christ” in Flannery O’Connor’s novel “Wise Blood”) on Act-i-vate.com, a webcomix collective founded by mutual friend and artist Dean Haspiel. Tim asked Jen to illustrate some of his most demented passages, which turned out to be the perfect assignment for the artist, who years earlier had nearly been booted out of an illustration program at Pratt and sworn off anything that involved “assignments.” Tim’s first request of Jen is that she draw a plushie’s fantasy: a Paddington Bear bed with mechanical arms. After this intriguing first request, stranger ones followed.

This weekend, it's King Con Brooklyn

King Con Brooklyn

Here's an event that makes me wish I lived close to New York City again: King Con Brooklyn, a comics and animation convention being held Saturday and Sunday at the Brooklyn Lyceum.

It has a great name, and boasts an impressive lineup of largely local guests, including Harvey Pekar, Al Jaffee, Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams, Brian Wood, Alex Robinson, Molly Crabapple, Dave Roman, Raina Telgemeier, Kevin Colden, David Gallaher, Steve Ellis and Matt Loux.

In addition, there's a programming schedule that includes workshops, a DC Comics/Zuda portfolio review, creator spotlights, and panels devoted to kids' comics, European comics, digital comics, animation and Marvel's publishing plans.

The convention will be held from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on both days at the Brooklyn Lyceum, 227 Fourth Ave., Brooklyn.

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

The Book of Genesis Illustrated

Sales charts | R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated climbs seven spots to No. 2 in its second month on BookScan's list of top-selling adult graphic novels in bookstores. It's bested, as most are, by the latest volume of Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto. But it's another story on USA Today's bestseller chart, where Crumb's book drops 49 places in its second week to No. 129. [ICv2.com, USA Today]

Passings | Tom Spurgeon, NPR's Mark Memmott and Ina Jaffe, and Michael Cieply of The New York Times have obituaries for Comic-Con co-founder Shel Dorf, who passed away on Nov. 3 at the age of 76.

Libraries | The Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library of Manga and Subculture opened over the weekend at Meiji University's Surugadai campus in Tokyo. Users can become one-day members of the library, where they can have access to about half of the 140,000 manga for about $1.10 per copy. The books can't be removed from the library. [The Japan Times]

Internet | Tom Spurgeon points out that the review blog Guttergeek will move to the expanded TCJ.com, joining a stable of hosted blogs that will include The Hooded Utilitarian. [Guttergeek]

Continue Reading »

Douglas Rushkoff writes X, a graphic novel for new video-game franchise

From "X"

Author, media theorist and sometimes-comics writer Douglas Rushkoff (Testament, Life, Inc.) has penned a graphic novel to promote an as-yet-unnamed video-game franchise from Smoking Gun Interactive.

Illustrated by Cheoljoo Lee and Younger Yang, the comic -- it's simply called X -- is being previewed on this marketing site in installments that roll out over the next four weeks. The full graphic novel will be released next year. More stories are set to follow.

As you might expect from the mysterious title, the story of X involves secrets -- specifically, "the secret history of mankind."

So says the press release: "As a small, scattered group of people stumble onto the truth, they find that they are too late: every great power on earth has already aligned itself against humanity. The war is all but over. Their struggle to discover the truth will lead them into a massive conspiracy that predates humanity itself -- from the world's most ancient sites to the global centers of power."

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Shel Dorf with Warren Beatty in 1990

Passings | Sheldon "Shel" Dorf, who in 1970 co-founded the event that grew into Comic-Con International, passed away Nov. 3 in San Diego's Sharp Memorial Hospital from diabetes-related complications. He was 76.

A collector of comics and Dick Tracy memorabilia, Dorf had run Triple Fan Fest in his native Detroit. After he moved to San Diego in early 1970, he met Ken Krueger of Alert Books in Ocean Beach and the two, together with a group of teen-aged fans, organized first Golden State Comic Con, held Aug. 1-3, 1970, at the U.S. Grant Hotel. Dorf served as president, or chairman, of the convention until the mid-1980s, stepping away just as the annual event was becoming a national stage for pop culture.

Dorf reportedly struggled with diabetes for years, gradually losing mobility and vision. He entered Sharp Memorial Hospital in 2008 and never left. His brother Michael was with him when he died.

Mark Evanier, of course, has a nice tribute to Dorf peppered with memories dating back to before that first convention. There's also an extensive Shel Dorf Tribute website, and a memorial banner topping the Comic-Con International homepage. The photo above, of Dorf with Warren Beatty on the set of the 1990 Dick Tracy movie, is borrowed from Alan Light's Flickr stream. [The San Diego Union-Tribune]

Continue Reading »

Unbound: Death stalks the internet

Interviews with comics creators usually include a lot of questions about the origins of the comic—what was the inspiration, how did you find a working partner, how did you find a publisher, that sort of thing.

One topic that hardly ever comes up is how the comic ends. It’s not the sort of thing one thinks of with regard to print comics, because the vast majority are either one-shot graphic novels or endless series that have been running since FDR was president.

Webcomics are a different matter. “Over 15,000 webcomics now exist online,” Wikipedia tells us, but probably 14,000 of those stopped updating after six episodes. This is the dark side of The Promise of Webcomics: It is true that anyone can start a webcomic, and that without the usual barriers to publication, such as editors and budgets, the web has become a seething cauldron of creativity. However, things like slush piles and contracts and editors are there for a reason: Not just to keep the crap out, but also to make sure the creator finishes the damn comic. The internet imposes no such restrictions. Consequently, many webcomics start with a burst of enthusiasm and fizzle when the creator runs out of ideas or has to study for finals.

Killer Komics, last updated January 2008, with a promise to update more frequently soon.

Continue Reading »

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Marvel

Business | Marvel Entertainment's third-quarter profits plunged 60 percent because of a steep decline in film revenue and licensing sales for the period. The publishing division declined 6 percent, or $2 million, compared to the third quarter of 2008, which the company attributes to a drop in custom publishing offset by an increase in book-market revenue. [Bloomberg, Marvel.com]

Publishing | The list of nominees for the Young Adult Library Services Association's annual Great Graphic Novels for Teens is, as usual, diverse, with titles ranging from R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated and Jamaica Dyer's Weird Fishes to Naoki Urasawa's Pluto and Mark Millar and Tommy Lee Edwards' 1985.

The nominations, divided into categories for fiction and nonfiction, are led by Marvel with 15 titles, DC Comics and its imprints with 13, Viz Media with 12 (but for 18 volumes), Dark Horse with eight and Del Rey and Yen Press with six each.

The final selections, chosen by an 11-person committee, will be presented in mid-January at the American Library Association's Midwinter Meeting in Boston. [YALSA]

Publishing | Marvel has hired Bon Alimagno, editorial director of Harris Publications, as its editorial talent coordinator, replacing Chris Allo, who left the company in September. [Bleeding Cool]

Continue Reading »

iFanboy creates the Ultimate Comics Twitter Lists

The social networking site Twitter recently added a new function called "Lists," which allows users to create and share lists of Twitter accounts. The fine folks at iFanboy have done the world a solid and created several comic book oriented lists, so you can easily find Twitter feeds for creators, companies, podcasters, bloggers and media.

They've also set up a list for their staff, an idea I shamelessly stole as soon as Ron Richards emailed me about their lists. Now you too can find out what Brigid had for breakfast, what Kevin thinks of V and who Carla dressed as for Halloween, all from one handy feed.

Halloween Reading | Joshua Smeaton's Haunted

From "Haunted," by Joshua Smeaton

I was happy to see this post at The Webcomic Overlook, as it reminded me about Joshua Smeaton's Xeric Award-winning webcomic Haunted, whose collected edition is solicited in November's Previews catalog. However, if you're looking for some entertaining reading for Halloween night (or afterward), the first five issues are available online.

Straight for the (horror) art | Alex Sheikman's Strangeways illustration

Part of an illustration by Alex Sheikman

For his one-a-day sketch series on his blog, Robotika creator Alex Sheikman drew a terrific illustration based on Strangeways, the Western-horror series by Matt Maxwell and Luis Guragna. The second graphic novel in the series, The Thirsty, is being serialized online right here at Robot 6.

To see the full illustration, visit Sheikman's blog.

Halloween Reading | Paul Maybury's Aliens strip

Aliens by Paul Maybury

Artist Paul Maybury posted a short "fan" comic set in the Aliens universe, along with a bunch of other cool random art, over on his LiveJournal.

Via

Halloween Reading | Dustin Nguyen's Batman short story

From Dustin Nguyen's Halloween short story

Using lyrics from the Geto Boys' "Mind Playing Tricks on Me" for inspiration, artist Dustin Nguyen delivers a one-page Batman comic for Halloween.

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

The Pirate Bay

Legal | A new study claim the shutdown two months ago of file-trading site The Pirate Bay by Swedish authorities "significantly, if temporarily, disrupted" the illegal trafficking of digital files worldwide. The emphasis is on temporarily. The white paper, released by anti-piracy company DtecNet, found the closing forced traffic to flood other BitTorrent trackers, "causing temporary secondary outages" for several days.

The study finds that BitTorrent traffic is soon expected to return to levels seen before the shutdown, with relatively new website OpenBitTorrent emerging as the successor to The Pirate Bay. [The Live Feed]

Sales charts | R. Crumb's much-publicized adaptation of The Book of Genesis debuts at No. 8 on USA Today's bestseller list. Meanwhile, the 46th volume of Masashi Kishimoto's popular shonen series Naruto inches up three spaces to No. 136. [USA Today]

Continue Reading »

Straight for the art | J. Bone's Great Pumpkin-inspired cartoons

The Great Pumpkin, by J. Bone

The talented J. Bone uses the holiday classic It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown as the springboard for a couple of hilarious and, of course, well-drawn gags. (Warning: In the second cartoon, Charlie Brown employs off-color language!)

Poor, poor Linus ...