Dan Goldman
Brooklyn creators welcome you to Trip City
Baby with a Mohawk
Several Brooklyn, N.Y. creators launched Trip City, a new “literary arts salon” website, this week, featuring free content by the likes of Dean Haspiel, Seth Kushner, Joe Infurnari, Kevin Colden, Chris Miskiewicz, Jef UK and many more.
“TRIP CITY reinvents the online arts collective with a virtual playground for a diverse set of accomplished and highly individualistic creators,” said Trip City founder Dean Haspiel, “spanning every borough of artistic endeavor from the visual arts to literature, music, video and beyond.”
Comis wise, there’s already a bunch of stuff to check out, including Dean Haspiel’s Bring Me The Heart Of Billy Dogma, Chris Miskiewicz and Kate McElroy’s Adrift, Joe Infurnari’s Memoirs of the Kid Immortal, Nick Bertozzi’s Lad Zeppelin, Kevin Colden’s Baby With A Mohawk and more. In addition to comics, the site will also feature profiles, interviews and podcasts with everyone from Moby to Henry Rollins to Michael Moore, who is interviewed by Dan Goldman in the site’s first podcast.
The release Haspiel sent out says that the group has future plans to take some of the content and perform it live on the road. “Working with so many Brooklyn locals, we have this great sense of community right out of the gate,” said Jef UK. “Then, when we take the next step and turn Trip City into a live event—which is in the works—our tribe is already gathered, so to speak.”
- November 1, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Ex-Marvel staffer says layoff protest misguided
Marvel
Publishing | Damien Lucchese, a production artist laid off last week by Marvel, explains why fans should not boycott the publisher over the layoffs: “What I’m trying to say is that I don’t want everyone to just see the MARVEL logo and think of a huge, top-heavy company, full of money hungry suits that make poor decisions (in some peoples’ opinions). That’s not what MARVEL is and there are still people working very hard (even harder now), day after day to put out comics for people to enjoy.” [Blog@Newsarama]
Digital piracy | Jim Mroczkowski posts his third interview with a digital pirate; as in the first two episodes, what comes through is that social pressures and one-upmanship have a lot to do with it. Also, piracy is expensive for the pirates, who usually buy the comics they scan—and often don’t even read them. [iFanboy]
- October 26, 2011 @ 07:00 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Marvel
Publishing | Retail news and analysis site ICv2 concludes its two-part interview with Marvel Publisher Dan Buckley, who addresses the struggle between “tightly interwoven continuity” and accessible comics: “… You run the constant battle of people saying ‘we need one-shots for people to jump on to,’ but the ordering trends don’t play to that a lot. The ordering trends play to ‘is this tied to an event.’ It was very evident with DC’s Brightest Day and Darkest Night orders. It was very evident during Civil War. So you hear that said a lot but most of the sales are very contradictory to those desires. Making books as easily entered into as possible is something we try to pay close attention to. I’m not going to deny that we don’t get lost in our own soup sometimes which is the nature of serialized story-telling. It’s hard to keep the revenue numbers without tying in books to leverage off the big books.” [ICv2.com]
- October 5, 2010 @ 08:09 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Brightest Day #7 (August's top-selling comic)
Retailing | Laura Hudson surveys a handful of retailers about what part higher cover prices may have played in August’s plummeting comics sales. “This summer has underperformed, and I think [the $3.99 price point] is a big part of it,” says Chris Rosa of Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles, “but also I think the lack of an event and the fact that the big books at both [companies] are extended denouements to events. There’s nothing really inspiring people to run out to the stores. People are tired of buying four Avengers titles at $3.99 a pop.” [Comics Alliance]
Publishing | Tom Mason looks at the return of Atlas Comics: “If you were 13 years-old in 1975 when the original books were out, you’d be 48 today. In other words, the age of the average direct market fanboy. But in order for these new books to succeed, they’d have to appeal beyond nostalgia because with most Marvel and DC comics at $4.00 a pop, you’ve got to have something special and excellent to lure some of those buyers into your own circus tent.” [Comix 411]
- September 17, 2010 @ 08:05 AM by Kevin Melrose
Red Light Properties launches on Tor. com
Red Light Properties
As he mentioned in his response to our survey this past weekend, Dan Goldman has anew webcomic launching at Tor.com today. Red Light Properties is now live on their site, and is a “tropical-horror series” about a real estate firm in Miami Beach that cleans and sells “previously-haunted homes” to people who’ve lost their houses to foreclosure.
“All my projects since 2001 have been steps toward getting *this* series done right, and I’m thrilled to announce that my baby is finally born, weighing 16 color pages with another 8 coming to you every Tuesday for the next six months, free of charge,” Goldman said over email. “There will be no ‘continued in the print version’ at the end, either; we’re giving the entire novel away on Tor.com.”
Goldman is also experimenting with the presentation of the story. “I’ve changed up webcomics a bit in the way the pages are presented, and I’ve upgraded my process to using Maya to create/light virtual environments for my characters to inhabit, so there’s a lot of sexy-new here for you to enjoy,” he said.
After the jump you can find a couple of promotional pieces for the story, including a flyer for “Red Light Properties.”
- January 5, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by JK Parkin
What are you excited about for 2010? Part 3
And here we are with our final round of responses from comic industry folks, after I asked them what they were looking forward to in 2010. You can find part one here and part two here. My thanks to everyone who took the time to respond to Tim O’Shea or myself.
Walt Simonson
A couple of quick thoughts from the old year and the new one:
1. I’m delighted a new YA novel in Gerald Morris ‘The Squire’s Tales’ series came out in September. ‘The Squire’s Quest’ is his first new novel in the series about Camelot and the Arthurian legends in several years. I’ve enjoyed the books immensely. I know. I know. It came out this year. Tough. I still couldn’t be more pleased.
2. I’ve been working on a long graphic novel for DC for awhile now (96 pages), should wrap it up in 2010 and really, I can’t wait! Catch me again in April or May and I’ll fill you in with some detail.
Walt Simonson’s work spans decades; he’s worked on comics like Thor, Fantastic Four, Avengers, X-Factor, Orion, Manhunter, Hawkgirl, World of Warcraft and his own Star Slammers, just to name a few. Earlier this year he donated this really awesome piece of original artwork for the auctions we did for our own Carla Hoffman, for which we will always be grateful.
Stray #1
Vito Delsante
1. Excited for a few things. The new Doctor (Who), Iron Man 2, and really excited for Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths. I’m not sure if Darwyn Cooke’s next Parker GN is going to be out next year, but I will be all over that the second it’s announced.
2. Excited for a few things of my own: Popgun 4, a secret project that I can’t announce at all, my new comic, STRAY, and getting FCHS Volume 1 out there in print.
- January 3, 2010 @ 03:42 PM by JK Parkin
Obama, the Mayan calendar and … Jack Kirby?
Yes We Will
In anticipation of Barack Obama’s inauguration tomorrow, Shooting War creator Dan Goldman created a short webcomic for Tor.com that plays off of the end of Barack’s first term and the end of the ancient Mayan calendar — Dec. 21, 2012 — or, as X-Files fans might remember, the day before the aliens come. Throw in a little bit of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World for good measure, and you have to wonder when we’ll see the first Motherbox in the White House …
- January 19, 2009 @ 08:23 AM by JK Parkin
Preview: 08: A Graphic Diary of the Campaign Trail
Artist Dan Goldman of Shooting War fame sent over word that he’s posted 20 pages of the upcoming 08: A Graphic Diary of the Campaign Trail on his website — you can find it here. The book, written by The New Republic’s Michael Crowley and drawn by Goldman, documents Crowley’s time on the campaign trail during last year’s presidential election.
While Crowley was on the road with the candidates for the duration of the campaign as part of his day job, Goldman said he was able to join him as he traveled through New Hampshire during the first primary. “I had to stay home to draw,” he told me, “but it was important to get a taste so I could make the story ring true.”
He added that the book is “stylistically a mashup of sequential narrative and graphic design” and “is a documentary-in-comics of this historic and magical election we’re all still buzzing from, as seen from reporters’ perspective on the campaign trail.” The book is due to hit stores Jan. 27.
- January 6, 2009 @ 10:34 AM by JK Parkin