Dean Haspiel
Process: Dean Haspiel’s Perry White thumbnails
Over at his blog, Dean Haspiel shows off the thumbnails he drew for a 10-page Perry White story, “Old Men Drinking in Bars,” that’s included in Superman 80-Page Giant 2011. It’s fun to see how Dean plots out a story with his blocky, almost geometric figures and shifting points of view. Writer Neil Kleid explains a bit about the comic at his LJ, and he also discusses why we need more Perry White stories. Joe Infurnari was the colorist for this story, which makes for a pretty solid team.
- February 9, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
ACT-I-VATE celebrates fifth birthday with new horror anthology
Everywhere
The webcomics collective ACT-I-VATE celebrates its fifth birthday today — congrats, guys! — by launching a new “tongue-in-cheek” horror comics anthology called Everywhere. The strip, created and written by Chris Miskiewicz, will feature artwork by Dennis Calero, Rodney Ramos, Bobby Timony, Nathan Schreiber, Seth Kushner and many more. The first strip, “Horses Everywhere,” is up now and features artwork by Andrew Wendel.
“Five years ago, eight independent cartoonists allied and presented personal signature works, online for free, and ACT-I-VATE was born,” said Dean Haspiel, creator of Billy Dogma and co-founder of ACT-I-VATE, in a press release. “Five years later, ACT-I-VATE expanded its roster, created a PRIMER graphic novel, and helped confirm publishing options between print and web. A bold example of how a curated destination point for new stories and ideas can sustain, ACT-I-VATE continues to break ground as the industry transitions to the Digital Age.”
- February 1, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Adrienne Roy passes away; contract changes at DC?
Adrienne Roy
Passings | Prolific colorist Adrienne Roy, who was a fixture of DC Comics for more than two decades, passed away on Dec. 14 following a year-long battle with cancer. She was 57. Although Roy’s work appeared in countless DC titles, from Green Lantern and Superman to Warlord and Wonder Woman, she’s best known for her extensive runs on Batman, Detective Comics and The New Teen Titans. Mark Evanier notes that “Her long tenure on Batman (more than 600 issues of various comics featuring the character) meant that her credit appeared on more tales of the Caped Crusader than anyone else except for Bob Kane.” CBGExtra posts an obituary written by her husband Anthony Tollin. [News from ME]
Publishing | Rich Johnston reports on rumored contract changes at DC Comics that would affect all new creator-owned titles in the DC Universe and Vertigo imprints. [Bleeding Cool]
Publishing | Storm Lion, the Singapore-based multimedia studio behind the 2008 Radical Publishing miniseries Freedom Formula, has closed on the heels the summer layoff of 30 employees in Singapore and Los Angeles. The closing leaves a planned movie adaptation, to be produced by Bryan Singer, “in limbo.” [The Straits Times]
- December 20, 2010 @ 08:47 AM by Kevin Melrose
Robot reviews: What’s up with Vertigo?
American Vampire Vol. 1
When DC announced it was shuttering the Wildstorm and Zuda imprints back in September, after having announced the shutterings of the CMX line less than six months ago (and only two years since they canceled the failed Minx experiment), all eyes started moving uneasily towards Vertigo, the first and final imprint DC had left. It didn’t help that DC had also announced they were going to be absorbing certain Vertigo characters like Swamp Thing back into the superhero fold. Add to that the recent cancellation of such series as Air, Unknown Soldier and Greek Street, and many ended up wondering not just if Vertigo was being sized up for the chopping block but when the ax would fall (I’ve got $20 in the office pool down for May 2011).
Mark Oliver Frisch aside, we don’t have access to DC’s actual, total sales numbers, however, so it’s nigh-impossible to tell exactly how well Vertigo books are selling and how essential the line is to DC as a publishing and licensing entity. Perhaps the only way we can make any assumptions at all about the health of the line is to look at the comics that Vertigo has published in the past few months. Which is exactly what I plan on doing after the jump.
- November 8, 2010 @ 01:01 PM by Chris Mautner
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
DC Comics
Publishing | Following Friday’s news that as many as 80 employees will be relocated or fired in DC Entertainment’s restructuring, Rich Johnston claims that most of the staff reduction will come from the end of temporary contracts. “DC has made it a policy to replace outgoing support staff with temporary staff for just this eventuality,” he writes. “New positions will open in Burbank to cover what is now needed over there, but there will be no cross-country moving arrangements for temps to fill them.”
Sean Kleefeld, meanwhile, provides commentary on the cuts: “Those layoffs? Those are for actual employees. Those are going to be admins and accountants and file clerks and licensing specialists and whatnot. Probably an editor or three. People who come in to DC’s offices in New York City to do their job. But what about the comic creators who also suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them? With Wildstorm and Zuda going away, won’t that mean all those creators who were working on books under those imprints no longer have an outlet for their work?” [Bleeding Cool, Kleefeld on Comics]
Digital comics | Deb Aoki interviews comiXology CEO David Steinberger about distributing Tokyopop’s Hetalia: Axis Powers, and the possibility of more digital manga. [About.com]
- September 27, 2010 @ 08:05 AM by Kevin Melrose
Food or Comics? | This week’s comics on a budget
Batman and Robin #14
Welcome once again to our weekly round of “What would you buy if your budget was limited?” — or, as we call it, Food or Comics? Every week we set certain hypothetical spending limits on ourselves and go through the agony of trying to determine what comes home and what stays on the shelves. So join Brigid Alverson, Chris Mautner, Kevin Melrose and me as we run down what comics we’d buy if we only had $15 and $30 to spend, as well as what we’d get if we had some “mad” money to splurge with.
This week we’re coming to you a day late, as comics won’t arrive in shops in the United States until tomorrow due to this past Monday’s big holiday. And check out Diamond’s full release list if you’d like to play along in our comments section.
Chris Mautner
If I had $15 …
Batman and Robin #14 ($2.99)
Glamourpuss #15 ($3)
Starstruck #13 ($3.99)
My three main purchases for the week. The one of note is the final issue of Elaine May and Michael Kaluta’s Starstruck. I have no idea if IDW plans on collecting the series or not, or if there are other Starstruck mini-series in the works (I’m guessing not; my Spidey-sense tells me that the series wasn’t a solid seller for the company), but if this is the end (at least for now), I’m grateful to IDW for taking a chance and introducing me to what can only be described as an utterly dense and utterly unique comics-reading experience.
- September 8, 2010 @ 04:05 PM by JK Parkin
Dean Haspiel talks Cuba, Deadpool, Woodgod and missing Harvey
Photographed by Seth Kushner
This has been a year of ups and downs for Dean Haspiel.
He’s riding high after last week’s win at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards. He, along with the crew of the HBO series Bored To Death, won for outstanding main title design, and Haspiel returned to his native New York City to continue the promotional blitz for his upcoming graphic novel Cuba: My Revolution with artist and family friend Inverna Lockpez. He just had a short feature published in Marvel’s Deadpool #1000 and has more work on the way for the House of Ideas. But this was also the year his friend and longtime collaborator Harvey Pekar passed away.
Throughout it all, Haspiel has become one of the strongest independent voices of comics (or “comix,” as he would say). His years of networking and socializing in the New York City comics scene came to fruition in 2006 with the inception of the ACT-I-VATE collective, resulting in several series making the jump from web to print in IDW Publishing’s ACT-I-VATE Primer. He continues to be a driving force in webcomics, with the third installment of his semi-autobiographical series Street Code just out from Zuda‘s newly transplanted home on Apple’s mobile-phone platform.
Today, he has a girlfriend, a studio full of friends dubbed DEEP6, a Sept. 15 signing at Midtown Comics, and new work appearing later this month in the second season of Bored To Death. On a recent morning, I talked to Dean by phone before he rode his bike to his nearby studio.
- September 3, 2010 @ 08:30 AM by Chris Arrant
Dean Haspiel wins an Emmy Award
Cartoonist Dean Haspiel was among the winners of the Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding main title design for HBO’s Bored to Death. Haspiel, who’s best known for Billy Dogma and his work with Harvey Pekar, shares the award with collaborators Tom Barham, Marci Ichimura and Anthony Santoro.
The category was among those announced Saturday at the Creative Arts Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles. Emmys in 26 other categories will be presented Sunday during the 2010 Primetime Emmy Awards telecast on NBC.
- August 23, 2010 @ 09:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
Dean Haspiel’s Street Code goes digital
Back when Zuda, DC’s webcomics contest site, was still kinda fresh and new, Dean Haspiel pitched a couple of comics and the editors picked his semi-autobiographical Street Code as an instant winner. Haspiel, as he himself points out in the Zuda blog, shows his work in a lot of venues, most notably online as a founder of the Act-I-Vate webcomics collective. But when Zuda folded its tent, rather abruptly, a few months ago, the comics hosted there were left homeless.
Now Street Code has joined the migration of Zuda comics to the ComiXology platform. As Haspiel says in his blog post, “my stuff tends to serpentine around what’s popular for general comic book audiences,” but he draws an interesting analogy as to why ComiXology is a good fit:
if Vertigo, my bread and butter publisher the last few years, has been dubbed “the HBO of comics,” then I posit that Zuda is “the IFC of comics,” where, like ACT-I-VATE, alternative concepts are refined online with the distinct intent to expose and develop fresh voices that could otherwise be lost in the gutters.
An interesting theory, although it may be hard for Zuda to keep an independent identity when its comics are simply lumped in with all the others at ComiXology.
- August 18, 2010 @ 01:30 PM by Brigid Alverson
Haspiel to ‘make Woodgod honorable’ in Strange Tales sequel
Woodgod by Dean Haspiel
With the announcement that a Strange Tales sequel is in the works from Marvel, some of the creators are starting to talk about their contributions. We already heard from Gene Yang and Rafael Grampá, who are respectively working on tales starring Frog Man and Wolverine. And now Dean Haspiel reveals he’s bringing Woodgod out of the moth balls for a new story.
“I performed a creative séance and summoned the spirit of Jack Kirby, whose only association to Woodgod was his cover contribution to the origin issue,” Haspiel writes on his LiveJournal. “Perhaps foolishly, I decided to attempt the impossible and make Woodgod honorable. My personal challenge was to banish Woodgod from the bad character idea drawer, pay homage to my favorite Marvel anthology, MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE [which featured my favorite Marvel character, The Thing], and high-five Jack Kirby. This fall, Marvel will publish the results and fans will decide if I prevailed.”
- August 16, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
One Piece, Vol. 59
Publishing | The 59th volume of Eiichiro Oda’s wildly popular pirate series One Piece will set a manga record with a 3.2-million copy first printing from Japanese publisher Shueisha. The previous record of 3.1 million copies was held by the 58th volume of the series. [Anime News Network]
Publishing | Mary Ann Gwinn spotlights the partnership between Fantagraphics Books and Rosebud Archives to publish archives of vintage comics. [The Seattle Times]
Comic strips | Craig Schulz, son of Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz, discusses the “Peanuts on Parade” public art project, David Michaelis’ controversial book Schulz & Peanuts: A Biography, and caring for his father’s legacy: “Our biggest fear has always been somebody buying up the rights and us not having any control. We’d rather have this property make $10 million a year for 50 years, than make $100 million in one year and walk away from it.” [The Press Democrat, via Journalista]
- August 9, 2010 @ 08:46 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Rocketship
Retailing | Well-regarded Brooklyn retailer Rocketship, whose owners confirmed just last week had closed after five years, apparently has reopened. However, it’s unclear whether that’s only temporary.
An update posted yesterday on the store’s blog reads: “Rocketship is currently open again for business. We apologize for any inconvenience over the past few weeks.” C0-owner Alex Cox had attributed the closing primarily to the end of the store’s five-year lease: “Five years went by fast, and my partner and I are suddenly making some large life decisions about what comes next. We love the shop, and as fun as it is, we have to figure out what makes sense for us on a practical level.” Cox posted yesterday on Twitter that, “Rocketship is back open for a bit; vacation is over, time to sell some books!.” [Rocketship]
Retailing | Gary Warth spotlights local comic-store owners about Comic-Con International, from the first-time exhibitors to the veterans — some of whom don’t view the event as a moneymaker. “All I ever did was just make enough to pay for next year,” said former retailer Tom Piper. [...] At the ‘Con,’ there was so much competition. I did the best I could.” [North County Times]
- July 21, 2010 @ 08:02 AM by Kevin Melrose
Dean Haspiel scores an Emmy Award nomination
From the title sequence for "Bored to Death"
Among the nominees announced this morning for the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards was artist Dean Haspiel, who received a nod for outstanding main title design for HBO’s Bored to Death. He shares the nomination with Dakota Pictures, 3 Arts Entertainment, Fair Harbor Productions, designer/director Tom Barham, lead animator Marci Ichimura and compositor Mark Rubbo.
You can watch the sequence here. The Emmy Awards ceremony will air Aug. 29 on NBC.
- July 8, 2010 @ 09:20 AM by Kevin Melrose
Black like Lois: Dean Haspiel’s favorite cover
Lois as you have never seen her before
Dean Haspiel posts his favorite DC Comics cover of all time, a crack-tastic Lois Lane comic from 1970 (with echoes not only of Black Like Me but also I Am Curious (Yellow)). Bonus: If the cover has you curious, you can read a detailed summary of the entire story arc, starting here, at Comic Books Revisited.
- May 27, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Comics Cavalcade | Sasquatch, Shakespeare and Bolshevik Breasts
Every day people post comics on the Internet. Here are a few that caught our eyes.
The Adventures of Bronzegold, Barbarian Rogue by Benjamin Marra
- May 11, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin