Disney
Everyone was wearing a Disney shirt but me: Day one at D23
D23 2011
We’re back in our hotel room after a day at Disney’s big D23 event in Anaheim, and what a day it was … you can check out some pictures from it after the jump.
- August 19, 2011 @ 09:47 PM by JK Parkin
Writer Del Connell passes away after winning Eisner
Disney artist Del Connell, who received the Bill Finger Excellence in Comic Book Writing Award during this year’s Eisner Award ceremonies just three weeks ago, has died at the age of 93. The Bakersfield Californian has a nice article about Connell, who could not attend the ceremony due to failing health, and Glen Weldon posts an appreciation at NPR’s Monkey See blog describing how Connell’s creation, Goofy’s alter ego Super Goof, changed his life. Mark Evanier, who worked down the hall from Connell for a while and was instrumental in getting him the award, adds his own memories of Connell.
Working at a time when artists and writers seldom signed their work, Connell wrote Disney, Dell, and Gold Key comics for 30 years but is still an unfamiliar name to most comics readers. “He did a three-panel gag for Mickey Mouse every day of his life, including Sundays, for 20 years,” his wife Ruth told the Californian. In addition to Super Goof, he came up with Space Family Robinson, which became the television series Lost in Space, as well as Wacky Witch. Yet few people (including the Eisner judges) knew his name, partly because his work was unsigned, and perhaps also because he was humble about it anyway—and when he retired from comics, he stepped away from the industry entirely.
- August 18, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | Man charged with insider trading in Disney-Marvel deal
Disney & Marvel
Legal | The Los Angeles Times reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Toby G. Scammell with insider trading. Scammell has been accused of using confidential information “surreptitiously gleaned” from his girlfriend to make $192,000 off of Disney’s 2009 acquisition of Marvel Entertainment. Scammell’s girlfriend was an intern working in the corporate strategy department at Disney. [Los Angeles Times]
Comics | Heidi MacDonald rounds up questions creators have raised about the Womanthology project, which raised $109,000 on Kickstarter, specifically about how the extra money will be used and whether the creators who are involved will be paid. Organizer Renae De Liz has posted additional details on the Womanthology site. [The Beat]
Conventions | Wizard World Chicago Comic Con gets into full swing today in Rosemont, Illinois. Comics guests include Brian Azzarello, Jim Cheung, Mike Deodato Jr., Gary Friedrich, Patrick Gleason, Mike Grell, Dave Johnson, Ariel Olivetti, Eduardo Risso, Bill Sienkiewicz and Ethan Van Sciver. The Chicago Sun-Times briefly spotlights attending artists Ivan Brunetti and Don Kramer, while the Daily Herald interviews Brunetti and Nate Powell. [Wizard World]
- August 12, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | ‘Spider-Island’ tops sluggish July; BOOM!’s Disney titles end in October
Amazing Spider-Man #666
Publishing | Sales of comic books and graphic novels in July fell 6.17 percent versus July 2010, with dollar sales of comic books sold through Diamond Comic Distributors falling 4.27 percent and graphic novels falling 10.10 percent year-over-year. Unit sales for comics were only down slightly, at .52 percent, which ICv2 points out “indicates that comic book cover prices have in fact declined. The problem is that circulation numbers have not risen enough to make up for the decline in revenue from lower cover prices.” Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man #666, which kicked off the “Spider-Island” event, was the best-selling comic of the month, while League of Extraordinary Gentlemen III Century #2 from Top Shelf topped the graphic novel chart. John Jackson Miller has commentary.
Marvel saw a slight increase in its dollar market share for July when compared to June, while DC’s jumped from 28.03 percent in June to 30.55 percent in July. IDW, the No. 5 publisher in terms of dollar share in June, moved to the No. 3 position in July. The top seven publishers were rounded out by Image, Dark Horse, Dynamite and BOOM! [ICv2]
- August 8, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Fantagraphics reveals covers for upcoming Barks, Gottfredson collections
Fantagraphics has revealed the final cover to Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes, the first volume in their series of Carl Barks collections. In addition, you can get a good look at the cover and spine courtesy of a brochure they published to promote the book.
- August 5, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Why the new Spider-Man matters; a look at ‘work for hire’
Miles Morales
Comics | In a post subtitled “Why the new biracial Spider-Man matters,” David Betancourt shares his reaction to the news that the new Ultimate Spider-Man is half-black, half-Latino: “The new Ultimate Spider-Man, who will have the almost impossible task of replacing the late Peter Parker (easily one of Marvel Comics most popular characters), took off his mask and revealed himself to be a young, half-black, half-Latino kid by the name of Miles Morales. When I read the news, I was beside myself, as if my brain couldn’t fully process the revelation. My friendly neighborhood Spider-Man was … just like me? This is a moment I never thought I’d see. But the moment has arrived, and I — the son of Puerto Rican man who passed his love of comics to me, and a black woman who once called me just to say she’d met Adam West — will never forget that day.”
The New Yorker, meanwhile, posts the opening on an essay from the year 2120 that looks back at the cultural significance of the new Spider-Man. [Comic Riffs, New Yorker]
Legal | Analysis of the Kirby estate/Marvel case continues, as both Modern Ideas and Copyhype look at the concept of “work for hire” in light of the ruling. [Modern Ideas, Copyhype]
- August 5, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
SDCC ’11 | Disney to unveil Marvel Press imprint at San Diego
Disney Publishing Worldwide will be in San Diego next weekend to unveil Marvel Press, a new line of children’s books based in the Marvel Universe. It looks like these will not be comics but “picture books, chapter books, novels, and storybooks”—there’s a bit of redundancy in that statement. The line will be featured in the Disney/Marvel Team Up panel at 3 p.m. on Sunday, with Marvel and Disney editors showing off their Marvel Origin Storybooks line. (The Disney press release makes this sound like breaking news, but the first three books are already available in stores.)
Disney will also be showing off their Disney Comics iOS app and they will have heaps of plain ol’ books at their booth (#1016), including limited quantities of upcoming releases. There will be giveaways: Phineas and Ferb masks and magazines, Rick Riordan Heroes of Olympus pens, and more. Filmmaker and author Don Hahn will be giving a panel on “Why We Create” and also signing copies of Brain Storm and The Alchemy Animation, and illustrator Joey Chou will also be there to sign his picture book It’s a Small World.
- July 15, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Disney Publishing Worldwide launches its Disney Comics App
Disney Publishing Worldwide this morning launched its free Disney Comics App for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, with more than 50 titles ranging from the classic adventures of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to newer properties like Cars 2 and Tron: Legacy. Two new comics will be added each week.
Individual stories are 99 cents, with themed bundles available for $3.99 through In-App Purchase. The app debuts in the United States and will be available in more than 80 countries. It will be available in additional markets later this year.
Disney boasts that the app offers “a new, director-style reading experience,” with readers allowed to choose portrait or landscape mode, automatic or manual smart paneling, and double-page spreads. Readers also may preview titles before purchase, share their stories on Facebook and save content for offline reading. There’s also a feature that automatically updates readers when stories relating to their favorite characters become available. Also: sound effects!
“Comics are a tremendous part of our heritage and we see great potential and interest in bringing our extensive catalog of Disney Comics to mobile devices,” Russell Hampton, president of Disney Publishing Worldwide, said in a statement. “We create over 25,000 original comic pages each year and it’s critical that we deliver this content to our readers around the world. We have over 1 billion Disney comic readers today, and our Disney Comics App will further broaden that audience.”
Read the official announcement after the break.
- June 24, 2011 @ 06:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
It’s tough to top a headline like ‘Fantagraphics’ Groth Discusses the State of Comics’
Gary Groth in action
…so I’m not even going to try. Instead I’m just going to link you to Alex Dueben’s thusly titled interview with Fantagraphics Co-Publisher and The Comics Journal Editor Gary Groth over on the CBR mothership, in which the trailblazing alternative-comics publisher and critic tackles a wide variety of the biz’s big topics. Here are a few choice nuggets:
On Fantagraphics shifting to digital:
To one degree or another, all of our books can be read on a screen.
We’re cognizant of that and we’re certainly moving in that direction. I think what the future is going to hold is that books are going to be on multiple platforms, in digital and in print. I don’t think one is going to necessarily overshadow the other. They can be available in various formats. We’ve been literally working on the digital formats for the last year, just working out all the bugs and talking to the various platforms. I’m sure by this time next year, a lot of our books, if not the majority of them, are going to be available digitally.
- June 21, 2011 @ 02:02 PM by Sean T. Collins
Tron: Legacy webcomic plunges you into a virtual world
When it first came out, Tron was a groundbreaking movie because of its use of computer animation, which up till then had only been seen in limited doses. Thirty years later, an online graphic novel based on the movie, Tron: Legacy, is breaking new ground again by using HTML5 to create a webcomic that is much more dynamic than your standard still-pictures-in-a-browser format.
This is not some cheesy “motion comic” where Hulk’s arm moves up and down while the rest of the picture stays static. Check out the demo video: The motion is not figures on a background but the backgrounds themselves, which rotate to give the reader the feeling of moving through deep space. (If you’re the type of person who gets seasick at iMAX movies, this may not be the comic for you.) Oddly, the fight scenes are more static than the setup, because those scenes don’t have the same three-dimensional motion effect. The plot itself seems to be rather elemental, and you don’t have to have seen the movie to follow the comic—everything is laid out for the reader.
The demo video is a bit of an ad for Internet Explorer 9, which is the browser this graphic novel was developed for. I was able to view it fine in Safari on my Mac, although it was a bit jerky. You scroll through the comic by dragging, so it’s not quite as smooth an experience as in the demo, and it’s a bit disorienting because there are no indicators to tell you how long the comic is or how far along you are. Still, it’s nicely done and worth looking at for the novelty value, if nothing else. Sort of like Tron itself was, back in the day.
- June 13, 2011 @ 01:30 PM by Brigid Alverson
Minimate and Mimoco exclusives for San Diego Comic Con
The folks at Mimoco, who have the license to make USB Flash Drives based on a variety of properties, including DC Comics and Star Wars, will have an exclusive Harley Quinn drive based on her appearance in the upcoming Batman: Arkham City video game:
- June 11, 2011 @ 09:10 AM by JK Parkin
Robot Reviews | Mickey Mouse Vol. 1
Mickey Mouse Vol. 1
Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Vol. 1: Race to Death Valley
by Floyd Gottfredson; edited by David Gerstein and Gary Groth
Fantagraphics Books, 288 pages, $29.99
It must seem difficult for younger generations to fully understand just how integral Mickey Mouse once was to the Disney franchise. While at one time his smiling, three-circle face was the iconic symbol for the company, today that image has been shoved aside to make room for Cinderella’s castle. The Disney bread is now officially buttered by a bunch of divas and Buzz Lightyear. These days Mickey is relegated to stalwart supporting cast member, fit for entertaining the preschooler crowd on daytime television, though efforts like the recent Epic Mickey video game show an interest in making him a viable player in their stable once more.
Even for my generation (that’s Gen X for those of you keeping score), understanding Mickey’s appeal was a tough proposition at times given how bland he seemed to appear in various cartoons and other products we or our parents were expect to shell good money out for. Everything about him stank of goody-two-shoes pitchman. No wonder he eventually faded from the limelight.
- June 10, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Food or Comics? | This week’s comics on a budget
Space Warped
Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy at our local comic shop based on certain spending limits — $15 and $30 — as well as what we’d get if we had extra money or a gift card to spend on a “Splurge” item.
Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList, and tell us what you’re getting in our comments field.
Brigid Alverson
If I had $15:
I’d surround myself with good-humored, good-natured comics. Sometimes you just gotta do that. My stack would include Veronica #207 ($2.99), which launches the new Kevin Keller miniseries; Donald Duck #367 ($3.99), with a rework of a classic Carl Barks story; Space Warped ($3.99), kaboom’s new Star Wars parody comic (I probably won’t get half the jokes, but it looks like it’s worth checking out); and Love and Capes Ever After #5 ($3.99), just because Love and Capes is such a charming comic. I may be poor, but at least I’ll be happy.
- June 7, 2011 @ 01:25 PM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Spider-Man musical returns Thursday; Noveck lands at Syfy Films
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
Broadway | The $70-million musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark will emerge Thursday from its three-week hiatus a vastly changed production, featuring five additional flying sequences, expanded roles for Aunt May, Uncle Ben and Mary Jane, a scaled back (and transformed) Arachne, new songs and a lighter tone. “There is still a ton of emotional complexity in the musical, and some of that original darkness,” says playwright and comics writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who was hired to help rework the script. “But we all also wanted a show that would honor the rich legacy and history of the Spider-Man story: the high school love story, the pretty girl next door, the science geek who is coping with new powers.” The new opening night is set for June 14. [The New York Times]
Publishing | Gregory Noveck, former senior vice president-creative affairs at DC Entertainment, has been hired as senior vice president of production for Syfy Films, a joint venture of Syfy and Universal. Noveck, who oversaw DC’s film and television ventures, left the company in August amid a massive restructuring. [Heat Vision]
- May 10, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | Mike Keefe wins Pulitzer; BOOM! loses Classic Disney titles?
From Mike Keefe's portfolio
Awards | Denver Post editorial cartoonist Mike Keefe has won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning “for his widely ranging cartoons that employ a loose, expressive style to send strong, witty messages.” Keefe, who joined the Post in 1975, had previously served in the Marines and taught math in college. “I am gobsmacked,” the 64-year-old cartoonist says. “In recent years, the Pulitzer has gone to much younger folks who are newer in the business. I’ve always done pretty classical editorial cartooning. I thought my day had passed.” Comic Riffs has Keefe’s award-winning portfolio. [Denver Post]
Publishing | On the heels of successive announcements that Marvel will publish comics based on Disney’s Pixar and Muppets properties, licenses previously held by BOOM! Studios, comes word that BOOM! has stopped soliciting Classic Disney series like Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Uncle Scrooge and Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories. However, Diamond’s Previews catalog for July contains listings for the publisher’s titles based on such Disney Afternoon properties as Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers, Darkwing Duck and DuckTales. [ICv2.com]
- April 19, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Kevin Melrose