Devil’s Due Publishing
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
Arcana vs. Marvel: Battle of the character libraries!
Arcana Studio
You expect a press release to inflate a comic’s importance or puff up a creator’s track record. After all, the publisher is trying to convince the media that its announcement has news value. But every once in a while a release overreaches. Just a little.
Take, for instance, this one from Arcana Studio announcing the acquisition of a handful of Devil’s Due Publishing titles that I’ve never heard of. The first half of the release is standard fare, briefly describing the comics and hyping the performance of Arcana (“the company has been growing in leaps and bounds”). But then we get to this paragraph:
Arcana’s graphic novels and intellectual properties have grown in the last two years to be as wide a library of characters as Marvel’s. Marvel was acquired by Disney for $4 Billion, and is the second major comic library to be acquired by a Hollywood studio. DC Comics, which is owned by Warner Bros., recently announced a newly-revamped business model, focusing on reaching deeper into DC’s catalog of characters.
It’s investor (or acquisition) bait, to be sure. But, hey, Arcana isn’t the first small publisher — or, rather, transmedia entertainment company — to dangle the $4-billion Marvel purchase in hopes of snagging a big fish. (However, it may the only one to date to use the DC Entertainment restructuring as back-up.) I’m not dwelling on that, though.
- October 6, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
SDCC ’09 | Thursday programming schedule released
Comic-Con
Comic-Con International has released the programming schedule for Thursday, July 23, as well as some special programming for preview night. You can check out the entire day’s worth of activities right here for yourself. Here are some of the highlights …
- During preview night on Wednesday, Warner Bross Television will show some of their pilots for upcoming TV series — Human Target, Vampire Diaries and the remake of V.
- July 9, 2009 @ 05:09 PM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
From the "KLiC!" comic
Controversy | A U.K. charity is under fire for a comic strip depicting a crucifix-wearing boy bullying a Muslim girl. The comic appears in the latest issue of KLiC!, a magazine for children ages 8 to 13 in public care, published by The Who Cares? Trust.
Mike Judge of The Christian Institute says the comic is “a clumsy caricature, symptomatic of a culture which says it is OK to bully Christians in the name of diversity.” However, Natasha Finlayson of The Who Cares? Trust claims the crucifix was intended as “bling” and not a religious symbol. [Telegraph]
Legal | The Michigan Supreme Court has remanded the case of Michael George to appellate court for a full hearing to decide whether his murder conviction should be reinstated. The retailer and convention organizer was found guilty in March 2008 of the 1990 shooting of his first wife Barbara. However, the judge later overturned the jury conviction, citing prosecutorial misconduct and possible new evidence.
A hearing is scheduled for today to determine whether George will be released from jail pending a new trial. [Detroit Free Press]
Creators | Jules Feiffer talks about his long career, and working for Will Eisner: “I showed him my samples which he thought had no promise at all. And only when I started talking about his work and it was clear that I knew everything he had done, from the first thing that he had ever printed, that he got interested in me. He had men in the inner office working on The Spirit. There was a penciller named John Spranger and a letterer named Sam Rosen. All of these were good guys. All of [them] were very professional. And none of them had any interest in Eisner at all. This was just a job. And they actually thought Will’s stuff was rather old-fashioned. They just considered him old hat. And I considered him a great artist. And so essentially he hired me as a groupie.” [Bookslut]
Creators | Steve Duin chats with Playboy cartoonist Doug Sneyd at Emerald City ComiCon. [The Oregonian]
Creators | Graeme McMillan talks to writer Geoff Johns about Flash: Rebirth. [io9.com]
Publishing | Josh Blaylock, founder and president of Devil’s Due Publishing, explains those bizarre comics solicitations featuring President Obama: “Everyone’s doing just these little cameos and stuff. I said, let’s just go do something nuts. I want people to look at this and say ‘What the hell is this?’ ” [Chicago Tribune]
- April 6, 2009 @ 06:09 AM by Kevin Melrose
2009 Joe Shuster Award nominees announced
The nominees for the 2009 Joe Shuster Awards, which honor Canadian comics creators, were announced today. The five-year-old awards program is named after Joe Shuster, co-creator of Superman. The list of nominees this year includes Darwyn Cooke, J. Torres, Karl Kerschl, Dave Sim, Kathryn & Stuart Immonen, Faith Erin Hicks and Seth, among many others.
Check out the full list of nominees in the press release after the jump.
- April 2, 2009 @ 01:10 PM by JK Parkin
Everyone else is doing it, so why can’t we?
Barack the Barbarian
We’ve all heard countless times that President Barack Obama is a fan of Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian, and we saw where his affinity for the wall crawler led a few months ago. Now the other sword has dropped.
On Sunday, Comic Continuum posted Devil’s Due Publishing’s solicitations for June, and they include a comic titled Barack the Barbarian: Quest for the Treasure of Stimuli #1, written by Larry Hama. There’s also a poster offered of the cover to the first issue by Tim Seeley (pictured above). Here’s the full solicitation text:
BARACK THE BARBARIAN: QUEST FOR THE TREASURE OF STIMULI #1
Written by Larry Hama, art by various, covers by Tim Seeley and Rachelle Rosenberg.
From a far away land rises a mighty hero. The son of peasants from two different realms, the one known only as Barak protects the people of Hope Kingdom at all costs. Watch as he takes on the likes of Boosh the Dim, Red Sarah, and Cha-nee the Grim in this first issue!
But wait, there’s more!
- March 31, 2009 @ 11:18 AM by JK Parkin