Doctor Who
IDW moves to comiXology, goes same-day print and digital
This seems quaint now, but it was big news in March 2009 when IDW Publishing made its Star Trek prequel comics available digitally on the iPhone/iPod Touch (the iPad hadn’t been invented yet, kids), and released the fourth issue the same day in print and digital. IDW’s partner in that endeavor was iVerse, and while the publisher’s digital strategy evolved over the next few years, iVerse remained as the provider for its branded iPad app… until this week, when IDW announced it has switched the provider of the branded IDW app to comiXology.
It’s big news, but in an insider-baseball sort of way. Readers who are already riding on the digital comics bandwagon won’t notice a difference. IDW started putting its comics on the comiXology digital comics service a few months ago, and when I checked iVerse’s Comics + app this morning, the IDW comics hadn’t disappeared. That isn’t surprising: IDW has spread its nets wide, putting comics on everything from the Kindle to the manga site eManga. So the headline on the press release is really just a change in the back end. What is really significant is that comiXology now has nearly a complete collection, providing digital distribution and branded apps for almost every major publisher except Dark Horse (which has its own app) and Archie (which puts their comics on comiXology’s Comics app but has iVerse run their branded app).
- December 15, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Food or Comics? | Arroz con Archaia
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.
20th Century Boys, Volume 18
Chris Arrant
If I only had $15, I would only be buying one title this week: 20th Century Boys, Vol. 18 (Viz, $12.99). Sorry Americanos, but Naoki Urasawa is delivering a gripping, sprawling drama that most other books can’t live up to. Wait, I’m wrong – I’d buy two comics with a $15 budget this week; I’d snag the $1 The Strain #1 (Dark Horse, $1) for the price point and Mike Huddleston. I’ve read the novels, but for $1 I can’t miss sampling at least the first issue.
If I had $30, I’d be thankful to double-back and first get Uncanny X-Force #18 (Marvel, $3.99). This issue, the finale of the “Dark Angel Saga,” has been a long time coming and I’m excited for the writing, the art and the story itself; and I can’t forget colorist Dean White, sheesh he’s good. After that I’d pick up my usual Walking Dead #92 (Image, $2.99) and then try Ed McGuinness’ new work in Avengers: X-Sanction #1 (Marvel, $3.99). I’m a big fan of McG’s work, but also realize just how different he is than the standard Marvel (or mainstream super-hero) artist in general. I’ve loved his storytelling sense since Mr. Majestic, and will pick up most any of his work without knowing much about the book itself. Next up would be James Robinson & Cully Hamner’s The Shade #3 (DC, $2.99). I’m surprised DC hasn’t done more marketing for this book, especially considering it’s a character who’s never held a series before; they’ve done little-to-any marketing to define just who the character is, relying on his ties to a lesser-selling series that ended ten years ago (no matter how good it was). Getting off my soapbox: those that have been reading The Shade know it’s good. After that I’d round it off with the best looking comic on shelves, Batwoman #4 (DC, $2.99).
If I was to splurge, I’d double-up my J.H Williams 3 fix with the final volume of Absolute Promethea (DC/ABC, $99.99). Although I already own these issues in singles, getting it over-sized and in hardcover is a treat. I’m hoping it also includes some production art or process sketches – I’m a nut for that.
- December 13, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Michael May
Previews: What looks good for January
Explorer: The Mystery Boxes
It’s time once again for our monthly trip through Previews looking for cool, new comics. As usual, we’re focusing on graphic novels, collected volumes and first issues so that I don’t have to come up with a new way to say, “ Mouse Guard is still awesome!” every month. And I’ll continue letting Tom and Carla do the heavy lifting in regards to DC and Marvel’s solicitations.
Also, please feel free to play along in the comments. Tell me what I missed that you’re looking forward to or – if you’re a comics creator – mention your own stuff.
Amulet
Explorer: The Mystery Boxes - With the Flight anthologies done, the all-ages version, Flight Explorer has morphed into this. I expect it to be as lovely as its predecessors and especially like the Mystery Box theme.
Archie
Jinx – J Torres and Rick Burchett’s graphic novel aimed at tween girls.
Kevin Keller, Volume 1 and Kevin Keller #1 – Archie collects the first appearances and mini-series of their major, gay character and also launches his ongoing series.
Ardden
Flash Gordon: Vengeance of Ming – The third volume in Ardden’s Flash Gordon series.
- November 11, 2011 @ 04:00 PM by Michael May
Food or Comics? | Doctor Who, Batman Inc. and more
Doctor Who
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.
Graeme McMillan
Let’s give all credit to IDW for their sense of timing. I’m so psyched up in advance of this Saturday’s return of Doctor Who to my television screen that this Wednesday’s release of Doctor Who Annual 2011 (IDW, $7.99) seems like the ideal way to prepare myself. If I had $15, I’d happily spend more than half of it on that particular anthology. The rest would go towards closing out the current incarnation of the DCU, as I’d be grabbing both Action Comics #904 and Batman: Gates of Gotham #5 (Both DC, $2.99).
- August 23, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by JK Parkin
What Are You Reading? with Mike Baehr
Elf World
Hello and welcome to What Are You Reading? Today our special guest is Fantagraphics’ Marketing Director Mike Baehr, who runs their indispensable company blog, Flog!, among other duties.
To see what Mike and the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below.
- August 21, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
Whovian? Whovillain!
Graphic designer and freelance illustrator Bob Canada has followed up his first Doctor Who infographic with one featuring the best Who enemies from the ’60s and ’70s.
Someone please hire this man to design a Doctor Who animated series. Or an ongoing for IDW. That would be good too.
- June 7, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Michael May
“Geek culture” magazine sales dwindle to almost nothing
The folks at ICv2 pulled out their calculators this week and took a hard look at the “geek culture” (their term) segment of the magazine business. What they saw wasn’t pretty. In April 2000, the top selling magazine was Wizard, with a total of 71,310 copies sold in comics shops (all the numbers are from Diamond). In April 2010, they sold 9,316 copies; now they sell none, because the magazine has shifted online (where, Sean T. Collins observed, it’s not exactly tearing up the internet). The top-selling magazine in April 2011 was Doctor Who Insider #1, which moved a grand total of 3,537 copies—a drop of 95% from Wizard’s April 2000 number.
Of course, this isn’t surprising. Geek culture and a love of gadgets go hand in hand, and it’s natural that these magazines would lose readership to the internet. Print magazines have a significant turnaround time that keeps them from breaking news, but beyond that, the web has become the gathering spot for fans of individual properties. When you can connect with other fans of Torchwood, Sailor Moon, or RPGs via the internet, paper becomes superfluous. The irony is that the “geek” fan community is probably larger than ever; it’s magazines that have dwindled away to almost nothing.
- June 1, 2011 @ 02:06 PM by Brigid Alverson
Food or Comics? | This week’s comics on a budget
Dark Horse Presents #1
Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy on Wednesday 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 what we call our “Splurge” item.
Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList if you’d like to play along in our comments section.
Chris Arrant
If I had $15, the first pick this week would be the relaunched Dark Horse Presents #1 (Dark Horse, $7.99). As a reader of the title in all its previous incarnations, I have a love for the format but also a desire to see them improve on it; editor Mike Richardson seems to have the right mix of big names and up-and-comers to make this work. Second up would be DMZ #64 (DC/Vertigo, $2.99), and this issue is the final issue in the “Free States Rising” arc and the first real sit-down between Matty and Zee in ages. Third would be Rick Remender’s covert ops squad Uncanny X-Force #8 (Marvel, $3.99). At first glance I question why I like this so much, but when I think about it, it becomes easy: I enjoy Remender’s storytelling, the artists they’ve had and the fearless nature to dig up some classic concepts from early 90s X-Men comics and general Marvel U stuff.
If I found $30 in my pocket instead of $15, I’d double back and pick up a pair of Invincibles: Invincible #79 (Image, $2.99) and Invincible Iron Man #503 (Marvel, $3.99). I really enjoy what these two teams are doing: carving out long expanding story-arcs that can only happen with long-term teams like these two have been fortunate enough to have. Third would be Jason Aaron and Daniel Acuna’s Wolverine #8 (Marvel, $3.99); although Daniel Acuna is known as a more glossy artist akin to Ed McGuinness meets Alex Ross, I think he really bucks that with the story arc he’s working on here. Lastly would be Avengers #12 (Marvel, $3.99) -– it really blows my mind that Bendis and Romita can do such a throw-back classic Avengers story and still keep the high sales going. I’m not complaining -– I love these stories as much as I love Avengers comics of lore, but they never sold this well.
- April 19, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by JK Parkin
What Are You Reading?
2000 AD Prog #1722
Hello and welcome to What Are You Reading? Our special guest this week is Mark Kardwell, who can be found blogging regularly over at Bad Librarianship Now or rocking out with the Klams.
To find out what Mark and the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below …
- February 27, 2011 @ 04:47 PM by JK Parkin
Food or Comics? | This week’s comics on a budget
Invincible Iron Man #500
Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy on Wednesday 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 what we call our “Splurge” item.
Check out Diamond’s release list for this week if you’d like to play along in our comments section.
Graeme McMillan
If I had $15 this week, IDW would be seeing a lot of it. It’s a cheat, because I’ve actually already read both Doctor Who Vol. 2 #1 and GI Joe: Cobra II #12 (both $3.99), but both are licensed comics done right in my opinion; Who in particular really catches the tone of the TV show in a way that the last series, as fun as it was, didn’t quite do (despite the writer, Tony Lee, being the same for both), and Joe has an ending that’ll get the nostalgics in the audience jumping up and down. It’s a weird mix of anti-nostalgia and art appreciation that gets me looking at my other pick of the week, Marvel’s Invincible Iron Man #500, which I’ll be picking up less for the story – although I like the “What if this really was #500 of the current series, and set 40-odd years in the future?” idea behind it – than the art, seeing as the wonderful Nathan Fox, KANO and Carmine Di Giandomenico join the okay-if-you-like-photo-tracing Sal Larroca for this oversized issue.
- January 18, 2011 @ 06:30 PM by JK Parkin
What Are You Reading?
Deadpool Team-Up #886
Hello and welcome to a special “birthday bash” edition of our weekly “What Are You Reading” feature, where the Robot 6 crew talks about what books we’ve read recently. Usually we invite a special guest to share what they’ve been reading, but since today isn’t just an ordinary day for us, we thought we’d invite a whole bunch of special guests to help us out — our friends and colleagues from Comic Book Resources, Spinoff and Comics Should Be Good!
To see what everyone has been reading, click below …
- January 2, 2011 @ 05:00 PM by JK Parkin
Themed sketchbooks: Zack Smith’s Doctor Who
The weekend means nothing for the automatons at Robot 6 — my week of spotlighting themed sketchbooks continues with a look at the enigmatic enigma of the Doctor. Who? The Doctor. Star of television, some movies, and comics — on both sides of the ocean — these interpretations of Doctor Who show some lurking fans in notable comic creators, and also a wish list of who we’d like to see do a Doctor Who strip some day.
Comics journalist Zack Smith took on the challenge of collecting sketches of the (in)famous Doctor. And he’s just getting started! Here’s what Zack had to say about it:
10th Doctor, Weeping Angel & Sally Sparrow by Jeff Parker
There are lots of themed sketchbooks out there, and I’d recently seen ones that dealt with the likes of G.I. Joe and Star Wars. I’d noticed how many comic creators were fans of the Doctor, and how a number had posted fan art on their websites. I thought it would be fun to take advantage of this and get a book that covered the ENTIRE history of the series, dating back to 1963.
In total, I got a dozen pieces to start off the book. The biggest surprise I got, though, was finding out some great comic creators WEREN’T Who fans — including Paul Pope, Amanda Conner and Jonathan Hickman! If you read their work, you’d swear it was influenced by them!
I have a number of goals for future pieces. Mike Allred wasn’t doing sketches, but I’d love for him to do the Second Doctor, or maybe the early models of the Cybermen, which were essentially sock-masks with radio parts glued on. It might be fun to get Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba from Vertigo’s Daytripper and The Umbrella Academy to do Captain Jack’s late paramour Ianto Jones. And Kate Beaton would be perfect for the Seventh Doctor!
The long-term goal is to fill all 100 pages or so of this sketchbook, with no repeats. But with 11 Doctors, six incarnations of the Master (including Eric Roberts), and various Daleks, Cybermen, Companions, spinoffs and miscellaneous aliens, I think it’s possible!
You can see his growing collection in a Facebook album he set up. Here are a few favorites:
- October 2, 2010 @ 04:30 PM by Chris Arrant
Talking Comics with Tim: Paul Cornell
Soldier Zero
Well before SDCC and last week’s BOOM!/Stan Lee press conference, Paul Cornell. When we did this email interview, details had not been released about Soldier Zero, Cornell’s collaboration with Stan Lee and BOOM! Studios. (For details about Soldier Zero along those lines, please be sure to read CBR’s Shaun Manning’s interview with Cornell from last week). For this interview, I instead focused upon Cornell’s clear respect for Lee’s work and general storytelling approach, as well as the opportunity to work with BOOM. As witty and sharp as Cornell is, it made for an enjoyable interview, despite his busy workload. I appreciate Cornell’s time, as well as BOOM! Studios’ Chip Mosher willingness to arrange the interview. I’m hoping that in addition to creating a great tale for us to read, Cornell garners the Stan Lee nickname he so clearly craves.
Tim O’Shea: Back in 2009, at your blog, you lamented that you entered the industry after Stan’s heyday of giving collaborators nicknames. Now that you’re working with Stan, have you scored a nickname from him yet?
Paul Cornell: I think I’ll try and pluck up the courage to ask him for one. That’d be like being knighted.
O’Shea: In a DowntheTubes 2008 interview, in terms of your own comics writing, you said “…what I try and do is what all the best superhero books do. I try and write modern Greek and Roman myths that actually reflect things that are going on right now. Much as every body of mythology talks about what is happening right now, in terms of when it was created. … And everything that Stan Lee ever did was literally just about looking out of his window. His Marvel comic body of work, which is all about New York, is just extraordinary.”
Are you looking out the proverbial window to write this Stan Lee project? If you are, can you share some of the view?
Cornell: This particular window is looking into the real lives of wheelchair users, and trying to create a superhero that reflects their experiences in the modern world. It’s Stan doing what he always did best, with us acting as Rick Rubin to his Johnny Cash: demonstrating that what Stan does isn’t about pastiche and nostalgia, but is classic and timeless, and can be immediate in today’s world.
- July 26, 2010 @ 03:30 PM by Tim O'Shea
Straight for the art | Roger Langridge draws Doctor Who
Planet Bollywood
This is what you might see if you are lucky enough to sit next to Roger Langridge on his flight to the States tomorrow to attend Heroes Con; he’s working on a ten-page story for Doctor Who magazine and figures he will be finishing it on the road. In the meantime, he shows off the pencils for one page on his blog. The story is called Planet Bollywood, which, as Roger says, just about says it all. If you’re heading to Heroes Con, go visit Roger at table 518, near the Boom! Studios booth, and see how it’s going.
- June 2, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
What are you reading?
Greendale
Happy day-after-Free Comic Book Day to everyone, and welcome to another edition of What are you reading? Our guest this week is Rick Marshall, editor of MTV’s Splash Page blog. To see what Rick and the rest of the Robot 6 crew have been reading this week, read on …
- May 2, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin