comics creators
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
Comics A.M. | The Avengers, comics and the evolution of storytelling
The Avengers #1
Comics | With the success of The Avengers film, Kendall Whitehouse discusses the narrative techniques comics have “explored and exploited,” including “multi-issue story arcs, crossovers, team-ups, reboots and multiple title tie-ins,” noting they not only help sell more comics but also have blazed the trail for complex stories: “The story has now become a world unto its own that allows the reader to explore whichever dimensions are of the greatest interest. Follow the events from the perspective of Iron Man or Thor. Or just peruse the core series and ignore the supplementary story elements. The series presents a nearly unbounded narrative universe for the reader to experience. It is easy to interpret this with a cynical eye as nothing more than a series of cheap marketing tactics designed to pump sales. And yet, when well executed, something larger emerges.” [Knowledge@Wharton Today]
Retailing | Saturday’s Free Comic Book Day also served as the grand opening for Aw Yeah Comics, a store in Skokie, Illinois, owned (as the name suggests) by Tiny Titans creators Art Baltazar and Franco Aureliani and retail veteran Marc Hammond. [Skokie Review, Time Out Chicago]
- May 8, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Kate Beaton, Ethan Rilly pick up Doug Wright awards
From "Hark! A Vagrant," by Kate Beaton
Canada’s own Doug Wright Awards were presented Saturday night in conjunction with the Toronto Comics Art Festival, and Kate Beaton, who the 2009 Emerging Artist award, fulfilled that early promise by taking home the award for the best book for Hark! A Vagrant.
Ethan Rilly won the Doug Wright Spotlight award for Pope Hats #2, and Michael Comeau received the Pigskin Peters award, given for experimental or avant-garde comics, for his Hellberta. In addition, cartoonist Terry “Aislin” Mosher, who has been drawing cartoons for The Montreal Gazette for 40 years now, was inducted into The Giants of the North, the Canadian Cartoonists Hall of Fame.
- May 7, 2012 @ 08:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | Tunisian broadcaster fined for airing Persepolis
Persepolis
Legal | A Tunisian court last week convicted Nessma TV President Nebil Karoui of “disturbing public order” and “threatening public morals” by broadcasting the animated adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, which features a scene that briefly shows an image of God. The Oct. 7 airing resulted in an attempted arson attack on the network’s offices and the arrest of some 50 protesters. Karoui was fined $1,600 by the five-judge panel; two members of his staff were fined $800 each. Prosecutors and attorneys representing Islamist groups pushed for Karoui to be sentenced to up to five years in prison. Others argued for the death penalty. [The Washington Post]
Business | Target will stop selling Amazon’s Kindle devices in its stores over a dispute regarding “showrooming,” where consumers check out a product at Target stores and then go home to buy it on Amazon for a cheaper price. Around Christmas, Amazon’s Price Check app gave shoppers a 5 percent discount on any item scanned at a retail store. “What we aren’t willing to do is let online-only retailers use our brick-and-mortar stores as a showroom for their products and undercut our prices,” Target executives wrote in a letter to vendors. Target will continue to carry Apple’s iPad, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and the Aluratek Libre. [The New York Times]
- May 7, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
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
Comics A.M. | The Walking Dead continues bookstore domination
The Walking Dead, Compendium One
Publishing | Continuing its domination of the graphic novel sales in bookstores, The Walking Dead laid claim to seven of the Top 10 spots on BookScan’s April chart. The series, by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard, took the first four positions. What’s more, 12 of the Top 20 graphic novels were volumes of The Walking Dead. [ICv2.com]
Publishing | Robot 6 contributor Brigid Alverson talks to Right Stuf director of marketing and communications Alison Roberts about that company’s announcement earlier this week that it will be publishing the first three volumes Hetalia: Axis Powers as a print-on-demand books. The series was originally licensed by Tokyopop, which is co-branding the books with Right Stuf. [MTV Geek]
- May 4, 2012 @ 07:55 AM by Brigid Alverson
How artists’ contributions to the creation of comics are overlooked
Watchmen co-creators Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (Photographer unknown)
Since the dawn of the medium, comic books largely have been the creation of writers and artists working hand-in-hand to produce the characters, stories, titles and universes you follow each week. Recently, however, lawsuits by comic creators against publishers — and sometimes other creators — have raised the question of where, when and how a comic is truly created. Are they the product of the writer, with the artist simply tasked to illustrate the story based on instructions laid out in a script or outline? Or is it a communal effort, with writer and artist both providing unique contributions to the creation of the character and setting, each serving as a storyteller in the planning, coordination and draftsmanship of the actual comic pages? In recent years, comics have become a writer-centric medium, for better or worse, but artists continue to play a crucial, if sometimes overlooked, role in the design of characters and transformation of the writer’s scripts into, you know, comics.
In an interview with ICv2.com, Howard Chaykin relayed a story about how an unnamed writer views an artist’s contribution as “absolutely nothing to do with the creative process in comics.” “I am of the belief that the artist does 50 percent of the ‘writing’ in comic books,” said Chaykin, who’s worked as a writer and artist for decades. “I think the guy is plum crazy. It staggered me in its limited understanding of what comic books are about.”
- May 3, 2012 @ 01:00 PM by Chris Arrant
Is Kickstarter becoming the next step beyond pre-ordering comics?
If you’ve been paying attention to the online comics community in the past year or so, you’ve no doubt come across someone looking for donations to help fund their comics project via Kickstarter. The website relies on ardent fans for these campaigns to work, in much the same way that smaller publishers have pushed hard the idea of pre-ordering your comics because direct market retailers might not stock the material otherwise.
When it first came into being, Kickstarter was pegged as a fad. However, it’s bucked preconceptions after projects like Womanthology pulled together more than $100,000 (when organizers only asked for $25,000) in August 2011, and has become an increasingly vital part of comics publishing outside the well-funded major companies. And when Rich Burlew’s webcomic The Order of the Stick raised $1.2 million when only asking for $57,750, it changed the thinking of many comics pros.
In effect, it’s turning away from publishers as the primary source to fund a comic and instead taking advantage of the wills and pocketbooks of fans. What makes it even more powerful is the idea of prizes for pledge levels, becoming more than just a donation with no strings attached; in effect, you could pre-order editions of the book in different formats with different price levels. Take for example the recent Kickstarter drive for the Image graphic novel Queen Crab: It raised $10,000, and in the process pre-sold 278 print copies of the book and 47 PDFs. That’s before it was even solicited in Previews.
- May 2, 2012 @ 10:00 AM by Chris Arrant
Kickstart My Convention | Coast City Comicon
While more and more creators are turning to Kickstarter to fund their comics project, Tristan Gallagher and Chad Pennell, co-owners of Coast City Comics in Portland, Maine, are using the website to bolster the second annual Coast City Comicon. With a goal of $10,000, the duo hopes to improve on the inaugural convention by bringing more guests to the Nov. 9-11 event. “Although the response from our 700 attendees was resoundingly positive, we knew we could do even better,” they write on their Kickstarter page. “The theme for this year’s convention? More. We want more vendors, more guests, more panels, more special events, and we know you do, too. [...] Every cent you donate to our project will go directly toward convention expenses. Even if we manage to break past our goal, we’ll put all of it toward getting more guests for the convention and won’t even keep a penny of it for ourselves — that’s how dedicated we are to making this an awesome convention!”
The pledge rewards are pretty imaginative, ranging from a haiku penned by Pennell ($2) and comics script reviews by Fred Van Lente and Alex Irvine ($75) to a tag-along with paranormal investigators ($100) and Shia LaBeouf’s expired driver’s license ($1,500). Yes, you read that correctly. The drive ends June 4; so far, they’ve raised $3,411 toward their $10,000 goal.
Guests already include Van Lente, Irvine, Becky Cloonan, Chris DiBari, Ale Garza, Sean Murphy, Ben Templesmith and Daniel Way.
- May 1, 2012 @ 11:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | Stan Lee talks comics and The Stan Lee Story
Stan Lee
Creators | Ahead of the premiere of the documentary With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story, the 89-year-old Lee discusses the big-screen success of his co-creations, the fairy-tale appeal of superheroes, his favorite character (he doesn’t have one), and a time when he was embarrassed to admit he wrote comic books: “Oh well, in the beginning, comics were the lowest rung on the cultural totem pole. I’d go to a party and people would say ‘What do you do?’ ‘Um, uh, I’m a writer’ and I’d try to walk away. And the guy would follow. ‘What do you write?’ ‘Oh, er, stories for kids.’ Well finally he’d pin me down and I’d say, ‘Okay, I write comic books’ — and boy, he couldn’t get away fast enough. Now, though, I walk into a party and someone sees me and they say, ‘Sorry, excuse me a minute, President Obama, I have to go over and say hello to Stan Lee.’ Well, okay. Slight exaggeration on my part.” [The Star-Ledger]
Conventions | The Calgary Sun previews this weekend’s Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo. [Calgary Sun]
Conventions | Jimmy Jay wonders whether Comic-Con International in San Diego could expand to two weekends, like the Coachella Music Fest. [ComicConMen]
- April 27, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Quote of the Day | Creators are supposed to struggle
Poor Superman
Many [artists], in fact, are effectively entrepreneurs, but have little of the regard of the lavishly paid, mythically potent CEO. A working artist is seen neither as the salt of the earth by the left, nor as a “job creator” by the right — but as a kind of self-indulgent parasite by both sides. Why the disconnect?
– Scott Timberg, writing for The Salon about the lack of sympathy creators of art receive from society at large. His article is especially timely considering the current conversation about creators’ rights going on in the comics industry.
Timberg has a lot of thoughts on the subject. He asks what it means to be a successful artist in the U.S., and talks to freelance creators who are seeing less and less paying work as traditional patrons are going out of business or looking for cheaper artists. He talks about the popular ideas that the creation of art is a leisure activity (as opposed to actual work) and that artists are supposed to struggle. It’s an excellent, thought-provoking piece.
Part of what makes it thought-provoking from a comics standpoint is how it meshes with the attitudes of many comics fans toward the people who make these things we love so much. Or even the attitudes of some current creators about the treatment of creators in the past. It’s not industry-wide, of course, but there’s still a startling lack of respect or understanding, or something, for how tough the creative life can be. It’s a truism that “no one goes into comics to get rich,” but is that the same as saying that creators should expect to get screwed because that’s just the way it is?
- April 26, 2012 @ 09:00 AM by Michael May
Comics A.M. | Chris Roberson speaks on his split with DC Comics
Chris Roberson
Creators | iZombie writer Chris Roberson discusses his recent public announcement that he would no longer accept work from DC Comics and his subsequent dismissal from his last writing job for the publisher. “Well, this has been building over the last few months, and mostly had to do with what I saw DC and Time Warner doing in regards to creator relations. I think the first thing — you have to understand that when I first started working for DC in 2008, the Siegels had just recaptured half of the copyright for Action Comics #1 and I felt very good about that. That seemed like a very positive step. And then over the course of the last few months there has been the counter-suit against the Siegels’ lawyer, Marc Toberoff, and I was less sanguine about that, and starting to get a little itchy about it, and then there were just a few general things about the way that it seemed that DC regards creators now that are working for them — and I can talk about that more in detail — but the real kind of proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back was the announcement at the beginning of February of Before Watchmen, which I just thought was unconscionable. And so I had already signed a contract by that point to do six more issues of iZombie, of which three of them had been turned in, and so I just made the decision to go ahead and turn in the remaining three, not wanting to jeopardize the livelihood of my collaborators Mike and Laura Allred. But once I turned in the last one, even though I had other work lined up, I would have to at least — if only for my own peace of mind — let people know that I wasn’t happy with it.” [The Comics Journal]
- April 26, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Stan Lee questioned on lack of Jack Kirby credit on Avengers film
Stan Lee
With Marvel’s The Avengers arriving amid the controversy surrounding DC Comics’ Watchmen prequels and a new development in the prolonged battle over the rights to Superman, it was probably only a matter of time before Stan Lee was cornered about the apparent lack of film credit for his longtime collaborator Jack Kirby.
During an interview to promote The Avengers, as well as the documentary With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story, Moviefone asked the legendary writer and editor about concerns — more like complaints, actually — that his co-creator’s name appears nowhere on the $220 million movie. Lee seemed genuinely perplexed, replying, “I don’t know how to answer that because in what way would his name appear?” before offering that “it’s mentioned in every comic book; it says ‘By Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.’”
Pressed, Lee said, “you’re talking to the wrong guy because I have nothing to do with the credits on the movies. I’m credited as one of the executive producers because that’s in my contract. But Jack was not an executive producer. So I don’t know what he’d be credited as. Again I know nothing about that, I have nothing to do with the movie’s credits. You’d have to talk to whoever is the producer of the movie.”
It’s probably not a fair question to ask of Lee. While he’s made cameo appearances in nearly every film based on his Marvel co-creations since 2000′s X-Men, and is listed as an executive producer, that credit was negotiated years ago by Lee’s lawyers (along with a much more tangible percentage of profits). And despite his chairman emeritus title and lifetime salary, he doesn’t wield any actual power at the company.
Still, fair or not, the question once again highlights the issue that Lee was in a position to make deals for credits and profit shares, while Kirby never came close. It’s undoubtedly an uncomfortable matter for Lee, made clear by his attempt to pivot away from the question. “Is there anything you want to ask me about the documentary,” he told Moviefone, “because I thought that’s what I was supposed to be talking about.”
UPDATE: According to some who have seen The Avengers, Kirby’s name does appear, in the end credits.
- April 25, 2012 @ 08:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | The state of the French comics tradition, post-Moebius
Froom "The Celestial Bibendum," by Nicolas de Crecy
Creators | Daniel Kalder looks at the state of French comics tradition following the death last month of Jean Giraud, the influential artist widely known as Moebius, and finds it’s in the capable hands of David B (“one of the most sophisticated cartoonists in the world”) and Nicolas de Crecy (“the ‘mad genius’ of French comics”). [The Guardian]
Creators | Tom Spurgeon talks to Michael Cho about what sounds like a really interesting project, his book Back Alleys and Urban Landscapes: “Because I don’t have an affinity for drawing a pastoral landscape. [laughs] You know what I mean? I’ve never lived in that environment, so I can’t draw that thing with confidence. When I close my eyes I don’t visualize that with any confidence. But a city is something I’m surrounded with constantly. With alleyways and lane ways and how light poles connect up to transformer towers which have extra leads leading down to the basement apartment. I can see that when I close my eyes, you know?” [The Comics Reporter]
- April 23, 2012 @ 08:55 AM by Brigid Alverson
Dan DiDio and Jim Lee address Chris Roberson’s DC departure
Fairest #3
Spurred by DC Comics’ upcoming Watchmen prequels and its prolonged legal battle with the heirs of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, iZombie writer Chris Roberson announced last week he would end his relationship with the publisher following the release of his Fairest arc — only to have the company decide his “services were no longer required” for the Fables spinoff. The developments triggered substantial discussion, and debate, online, so it’s perhaps to be expected that Roberson would be brought up over the weekend to DC Comics Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee during the Before Watchmen panel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.
Asked by moderator Geoff Boucher how, as a creator, Lee reconciles Roberson’s comments about DC’s position on creators’ rights, the Image Comic co-founder replied, “I don’t know the writer, Chris [Roberson], and so — you know, it certainly would have helped if I could have talked to him or if he would’ve reached out to me. It seemed odd to me — as a creator, I would not publicly state I have a problem with the company that’s paying me to do work for them and I’m going to quit after I finish this one project. It would seem wise to me to wait until you finish that project to voice that complaint.”
DiDio was more terse in his response, saying, “As far as I’m concerned, he made a very public statement about not wanting to work for DC, and we honored that statement.”
“See,” Lee joked, “now that’s the line that’s going to run.”
Visit Comic Book Resources to read complete coverage of the Before Watchmen panel.
- April 23, 2012 @ 08:00 AM by Kevin Melrose