Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources - Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment » Dwayne McDuffie

Comics A.M. | Dwayne McDuffie’s website to focus on writer’s legacy

JK Parkin — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:55:36 +0000

Dwayne McDuffie

Creators | Eugene Son, a friend of late comics creator Dwayne McDuffie, announced plans to transform the writer’s website from “one that promoted his work to one that reflects his immense legacy.” The site’s blog will remain active, with plans to post old columns and scripts written by McDuffie, as well as tributes and stories from McDuffie’s friends. Earlier this week Son posted a 2002 essay he said was one of McDuffie’s most-read works, “Six Degrees of St. Elsewhere (aka The Grand Unification Theory).” [DwayneMcDuffie.com]

Publishing | Wizard has hired Kevin Kelly as managing editor of its “website, social media and digital content endeavors.” Kelly has previously worked for several entertainment websites, including io9, Moviefone, Cinematical and Joystiq, and was most recently senior features editor for G4tv.com. [press release]

Manga | Playback hosts a “Manga Moveable Feast” on Ken Akamatsu’s Love Hina, which returns to print from Kodansha Comics next week. [Playback:stl]

Conventions | Our own Brigid Alverson reports on the kids comics presence at this past weekend’s New York Comic Con. [Publishers Weekly]

New York Comic Con

Conventions | Alyssa Rosenberg gives her impressions of New York Comic Con: “… The other thing that stuck with me was the experience I’ve never had before, of being in a place essentially without a visible social hierarchy. Some of that is because this is a temporary community, and some of it’s because everyone there is pulling a Clark Kent, taking off their workaday clothes and putting on what makes them comfortable and most them, whether it’s Chuck Taylors or some really fantastic ladies-fit purple Mandalorian armor. But despite the fact that the audience ranged from black teenaged hipsters, to parents with their kids, to the standard, stereotypical white-dude comic fans, as well as up and down the age spectrum, it was essentially impossible to tell who had power among the attendees. Cosplayers? They get looked at, and praised, and have their pictures taken, but getting what you want out of an experience isn’t necessarily the same as having power in it. Consumers? To a certain extent, yes: you might have to wait in a lot of lines, and pay money, but the entire experience exists for your stimulation. But by the temporary nature of the situation, there’s no way to tell who’s cool, maybe because for once, for a couple of days, it just doesn’t matter.” [ThinkProgress]

Creators | Jeff Lemire chats briefly about his plans for DC’s Animal Man and Frankenstein, Agent of S.HA.D.E. [io9.com]

Creators | Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian discusses his passion for comics and working with artist Alex Ross on the band’s latest album cover, among other topics. [Denver Westword]

Commentary | Our own Matt Seneca looks at a recent collection of Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant comic. “A few pages into the fourth of Fantagraphics’ beautifully reprinted new editions of Hal Foster’s masterpiece and it’s difficult indeed to remember that this isn’t the greatest comic ever.” [The Comics Journal]

Comics A.M. | Janelle Asselin exits DC; Del Rey’s Betsy Mitchell retires

Brigid Alverson — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:10:04 +0000

Janelle Asselin

Publishing | DC Comics associate editor Janelle Asselin has left the company, reportedly for a job with Disney. She clarifies on Twitter that, contrary to a report, she wasn’t escorted from the building on Tuesday but, rather, left “at my leisure.” Asselin had been with DC since 2008, working primarily on Batman books like Batman and Robin, Batman: Streets of Gotham, Red Robin, Birds of Prey and the relaunched Batman, Batwoman, Detective Comics and Savage Hawkman. [Bleeding Cool]

Publishing | Longtime editor Betsy Mitchell is taking early retirement from her post as editor-in-chief of Del Rey, where she helped create Del Rey Manga. Tricia Pasternak, a former Del Rey Manga editor herself, has been promoted to editorial director. Del Rey was established as a science fiction prose imprint; the manga line was created in 2004 and was mostly shut down in 2010, when Kodansha began publishing its manga directly in the U.S. However, Del Rey still publishes a handful of manga and graphic novels, including xxxHolic, King of RPGs, and Deltora Quest. [Publishers Weekly]

Legal | In a twist that sounds like something out of a comic (or even an ad from an old comic), a witness in the Michael George trial testified he saw someone wearing an obviously fake beard outside George’s Clinton Township, Michigan, comics shop a few minutes before George’s first wife Barbara was murdered inside the store in 1990. [The Tribune Democrat]

Starfire

Comics | The latest critique of Starfire comes from Michelle Lee’s 7-year-old daughter, who was a big fan of the incarnations of the character in the Teen Titans comic and animated cartoon. She summarizes the whole problem with childlike simplicity: “Well, she’s not fighting anyone. And not talking to anyone really. She’s just almost naked and posing.” [io9.com]

Comics | Former superhero reader and current manga blogger Deb Aoki describes the Starfire/Catwoman controversy for her manga fanbase and discusses how shonen manga manage to provide good, even fanservice-laden, stories for men without alienating their female readers: “The fascinating and diverse female casts of Bleach and Naruto are a big part of these series’ appeal to both male and female readers. Yes, there are some busty babes in both series — but Soul Reaper Rangiku Matsumoto is a commanding officer in the Soul Society in Bleach, and Tsunade is a strong and dynamic Hokage (leader) of Naruto’s ninja village to name just a few.” [About.com]

Comics | Brian Truitt spotlights Marvel’s ABC television tie-in Castle: Richard Castle’s Deadly Storm, the just-released graphic novel by Brian Michael Bendis, Kelly Sue DeConnick and Lan Medina. [USA Today]

Wolverine and the X-Men #1

Comics | Writer Jason Aaron and editor Nick Lowe discuss the upcoming debut of Wolverine and the X-Men, which establishes Logan as headmaster of the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. [The Associated Press]

Creators | Jonathan Callan has started a Facebook campaign to persuade the Animation Writers Caucus to give a Lifetime Achievement Award to the late Dwayne McDuffie. McDuffie’s wife Charlotte has posted there, asking that members of the Caucus nominate McDuffie via write-ins, as his name is not on the eligible list. [Facebook, via Blog@Newsarama]

Creators | Kate Beaton gives a pair of interviews about her popular webcomic Hark! A Vagrant!, which has received a printed collection from Drawn and Quarterly. [The L Magazine, io9.com]

Creators | Geoff Johns discusses DC’s relaunched Aquaman, which debuts today: “Everybody around has at least heard of Aquaman, and they’ve probably heard all the jokes — the same jokes Aquaman’s heard — and they have their opinion on Aquaman. Whether it’s good or bad, that’s what the book’s all about.” [USA Today]

Creators | For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, writer Jim Ottaviani was interviewed about his new graphic novel Feynman while riding on a teeter-totter with the interviewer. [HD Teeter Talk]

Comics | Caroline Small, the treasurer for Small Press Expo, meditates on the difficulty of bringing art-comics to a wider audience. [The Hooded Utilitarian]

Americus

Censorship | The Good Comics for Kids bloggers, many of whom are librarians, discuss MK Reed and Jonathan Hill’s Americus, a graphic novel about religious fundamentalists challenging a YA fantasy novel in a small-town library. The discussion touches on the issues the book raises and the way those issues are portrayed in the graphic novel. [Good Comics for Kids]

Comics | Kristy Valenti takes a look at Rob Liefeld’s fashion sense: “From a fashion (and commercial) perspective, ideally, a superhero artist should create an iconic costume (for example, Steve Ditko’s Spider-Man kit, Gil Kane’s Green Lantern look, or even Power Girl’s indefatigable “boob window”); Liefeld’s costuming is more like a collection, with certain motifs he returns to.” Such as high-waisted pants, shoulder pads and French-cut bikinis. Call in the fashion police! [comiXology]

Comics | Daniel BT suspects that life is imitating art as DC’s latest effort matches all too closely a Cracked parody of superhero comics art from the 1970s. [Sunday Comics Debt]

Manga | Translator Tomo Kimura lists the top ten manga creators in Japan and the number of books they have sold, from a list compiled by Nikkei Entertainment magazine. All ten are published in the U.S. as well as Japan, and One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda tops the list with almost 55 million sold. [Tomo Kimura's Translation Notes]

CCI apologizes for asking Matt Wayne to change his Dwayne McDuffie tribute

JK Parkin — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 22:30:04 +0000

Dwayne McDuffie

This year’s Comic-Con International souvenir book will include tributes to comics and animation writer Dwayne McDuffie, who passed away in February. One creator whose contribution won’t be included, however, is Matt Wayne. The former Milestone editor and Justice League Unlimited story editor shared on the Dwayne McDuffie forums last week that he was approached to write a tribute, which the editors of the book asked him to change after seeing his final submission.

“I ran my tribute past Dwayne’s wife before I sent it, and she dubbed it ‘perfect,’” he wrote in his forum post. “But the people at Comic-Con asked me to change it, and I decided to just let it go. I’m worried that Dwayne is going to be the industry’s ‘proof’ that we’re all post-racial and chummy, now that they can’t be embarrassed into hiring him anymore, and I don’t want to contribute to that absurd but inevitable narrative.”

You can read Wayne’s entire tribute over on the forums.

David Glanzer, director of marketing and public relations for CCI, said that the book’s editors asked for the piece to be “celebratory” in nature, in keeping with other pieces in the book.

“As you know we held Dwayne McDuffie in high regard as he was a past recipient of our Inkpot award. Most recently we held a tribute panel for him at WonderCon. The changes requested were never meant to slight him or his family, and we really are truly sorry for the anguish this has caused,” Glanzer told Robot 6. “In the future we will try to prevent a similar situation as this from occurring by having a larger circle of people weigh in on any potential changes or edits to In Memoriam pieces.

“Again we offer our heart felt apology to Matt Wayne and the family and friends of Dwayne McDuffie.”

What Are You Reading?

JK Parkin — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 22:07:33 +0000

Any Empire

Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading? This week our special guest is Robert Stanley Martin.

Robert writes for his blog Pol Culture, and is a contributing writer to The Hooded Utilitarian. He is a past contributor to The Comics Journal, and his essays on R. Crumb’s The Book of Genesis Illustrated and Eddie Campbell’s Alec: The Years Have Pants are featured in the soon-to-be-released The Comics Journal #301.

To see what Robert and the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click on through …

*****

Great Darkness Saga

Tom Bondurant

This week, some unplanned, unexpected free time gave me the opportunity to read the new edition of Legion of Super-Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga. Now, I have been an on-again, off-again Legion fan throughout the years, reading the book sporadically in the ’70s and ’80s, and pretty steadily in the ’90s, and am slowly catching up with the original stories via Showcase Presents. I read “GDS” originally in its 1989 paperback edition, which reprinted only the particular issues themselves (#s 290-94) and the epilogue revealing Darkseid’s subtle revenge. I thought it was a good adventure story, and certainly a good blend of the Legion with the Fourth World. The new hardcover reprints a lot more material — issues #284-96, plus Annual #1 — but that pushes “GDS” itself into the last half of the book, with not a lot of buildup in the first half. Thus, as I was reading, I kept wondering what Chameleon Boy’s mission to Khundia, Princess Projectra’s political intrigue, or the new Invisible Kid, had to do with the fireworks to come. The answer, I think, is “not a lot,” at least in story terms. Those plots and subplots are, at most, background for where we find those characters in “GDS.” Perhaps more importantly, though, the non-”GDS” issues seem like a pretty good sample of early-’80s Legion comics: multiple interweaving plots, the needs of a huge cast (and some significant supporting characters), and of course healthy doses of superhero space opera. Overall I think the collection works pretty well, as long as you don’t expect to see the Fourth Worlders too early on.

Since it was the first week of the Flashpoint onslaught, naturally I picked up FP #2, plus the first issues of Batman: Knight of Vengeance and Secret Seven. Honestly, I could see B:KOV working just as well as a garden-variety Elseworlds, at least at this point. It’s as moody as you’d expect from Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso, although the Thomas Wayne here is a lot more beefy (and Miller/Janson-esque) than the one in FP Proper. It’s also about what you’d expect from a Batman Elseworlds: familiar faces in unfamiliar roles, including the Penguin working for Wayne Casinos and Gordon as the Alfred-esque confidant. It’s pretty violent, too: there’s some cannibalism, and an injury-to-the-eye scene just for good measure. Otherwise, it’s a pretty noirish, entertaining Batman story.

Secret Seven

Secret Seven I am less enthused about, which is too bad, because I am a fan of both Peter Milligan and George Perez. To put it bluntly, I don’t think Perez is entirely right for this material — which, again, is too bad, because if he had channeled some of the old post-psychedelia ’70s mojo, he could really have done something special with it. The story doesn’t help much, though: Rac Shade, disgraced leader of “the Seven,” gets called home to an alternate dimension where he’s alternately tortured and debriefed. This is where all the psychedelia comes in (or, more accurately, could have been amplified.) Meanwhile, June Moone, the Enchantress, is out in the real world looking for him. Fernando Blanco takes over the art for the book’s last few pages, and inker Scott Koblish ties together his work with Perez’s to make everything flow together, but it’s a lot of setup without much payoff. I’ll probably end up getting the whole thing, and I think there’s some potential here; but it doesn’t thrill me like I thought it would.

On the other hand, Secret Six was the start of what may be Gail Simone’s farewell tour/victory lap on this book. It’s an extended epilogue to the team’s adventures in Hell, starting with the fate of Scandal’s exotic-dancer girlfriend (and the creep who abducted her) and ending with Bane going on a very weird (but apparently very fulfilling) first date. Ultimately, everyone affirms everyone else, and the team generally; and it’s about as feel-good as this book gets. I know Simone’s not going to be on Birds Of Prey past August, and I hadn’t heard anything about this title — but if these are her last few issues, I’m going to miss her a lot.

Oh, and Flashpoint #2 was decent — perhaps not as good on its own as issue #1, because it spent a lot of time with Wonder Woman, Deathstroke, and Aquaman, sailing the death-choked seas of the commingled Mediterranean/North Atlantic. Each of those characters gets his or her own character moment, with Deathstroke perhaps being
the most sympathetic. Wonder Woman and Aquaman are basically introduced to show how hardcore they are, which I suppose serves to put a couple of scowly faces on the carnage described in issue #1 (and, here, in a stark two-page spread of the wrecked Eiffel Tower). Back with Batman and Barry, the discussion centers around restoring Barry’s speed, and — SPOILER ALERT — that turns out to be the cliffhanger for this issue. I hope this miniseries picks up the pace with subsequent issues, or issue #5 is going to feel pretty cramped.

Finally, I thought the Dwayne McDuffie tribute issue of Static Shock was quite good, and obviously very heartfelt. There’s a story about Static dealing with loss, but there’s also a more pointed commentary on McDuffie himself, saying point-blank that the people who held him back in life now get to eulogize him. Not to worry, though, Static and Rocket tell McDuffie — now he’s a legend, like them.

Brigid Alverson

It’s hard to imagine a book that could make me happier than Craig Yoe’s Archie: A Celebration of America’s Favorite Teenagers, not just because I love Archie comics but also because Yoe is a genius for finding odd little tidbits and bits of ephemera that relate to whatever comic he is writing about. So not only do we get the history of the company, biographies of the three principals, character overviews, and a generous selection of full-length comics, both old and new, we also get to see unpublished work by Bob Montana and Dan DeCarlo, a photo of Elvis reading an Archie comic, and even a photo-comic from a girlie magazine (published by an affiliated company, MLJ Magazines) in which a model visits a comics studio‹starring real members of the Archie staff. It’s like he went rummaging around in Archie’s attic and put all the cool stuff he found on display.

Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors #1

This week, I read the first two issues of Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors, which is an all-ages comic about a school for super villains. I felt it was pretty well done, with the all the usual aspects of school‹tough teachers, gym class, crushes, bullying‹nicely handled in the budding-super villain context. I also thought it was interesting that the creators make it clear from the start that the school is a hothouse where students are sheltered from the realities of the actual superhero/super villain world, and in issue #2 (which comes out on June 15) those realities are threatening to impinge on it. It’s nicely drawn and parts are quite funny (especially the origin story of the school itself), and I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops in future issues.

I picked up vol. 13 of Black Jack to relax with after a tough day this week, and I’m glad I did. This is one manga I can read for pure enjoyment. Osamu Tezuka was amazingly consistent in these stories, each of which is complete in about 20 pages and includes a dilemma, some sort of moral angle, and a really outlandish medical procedure. It’s highly entertaining and manages to be a bit literary without making the reader work too hard. With summer coming on, I’m looking forward to diving into my stack and pulling out a few more for hammock reading.

Chris Mautner

Strange Adventures — The only decent story in here is by Ross Campbell, who provides a nice bit of body horror that would make David Cronenberg proud. Everything else here is awful. Worse, it’s largely by talented people that really should know better.

Sidekicks

Sidekicks by Dan Santat — This is an all-ages comic about a superhero that has pets that, in turn, gain superpowers and attempt to fight crime. It’s cute, though a little short in the storytelling department — I felt like some of the cast could have used a bit more exposition, or at least screen time. Still, kids, especially kids who are into pets and superheroes, will likely dig it.

American Vampire Vol. 2 by Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque and Mateus Santolouco — Stephen King isn’t around this time, but that’s OK by me, as I really didn’t care much for King’s contributions in the first volume. Having said that, I had two big problems with this collection: 1) It’s not even the least, littlest bit scary. or even thrilling really; b) the cultural anachronisms really seemed to slap me out of the book time and again. Considering the story takes place eighty years ago, it has a modern gloss and feel that doesn’t really seem to fit. My goodwill from the first volume is enough to make me hopeful about the next collection, but I sadly found this entry to be rather lackluster.

Robert Stanley Martin

A major focus of my time right now is the International Best Comics Poll for The Hooded Utilitarian website. The poll, which is modeled after the one Sight and Sound magazine conducts on film every ten years, is being voted on right now by comics creators, reviewers, and others in the field. We’ve received over 100 top-ten lists so far, and I’m having a blast logging them. The best part is seeing the votes for work with which I’m not familiar. I’m having enormous fun finding out about these comics online; it’s just extraordinary stuff. Before this, I considered myself pretty erudite about comics and cartooning. It turns out I didn’t know the half of it when it comes to the field and what it has to offer. I have no idea what the response will be when the poll results are published in August, but I hope people will use the voting lists as a starting point for expanding their horizons. Comics is a wonderfully rich and diverse field, and if the poll gives people new opportunities to fall in love with the form all over again, I couldn’t ask for more from it.

The New Dinosaurs

My reading is generally a pretext for writing, and my big writing project at the moment is a critical appreciation of the wildlife art of William Stout. Stout is one of the most diversified artists around, and his work in comics, illustration, and film production design is nothing less than outstanding. However, the glory of his career is his wildlife art, particularly his Antarctica and dinosaur paintings. His depictions of the animals and their environments are stunningly realized—thoroughly researched and absolutely gorgeous in terms of picture composition and color design. At their best, they have a metaphorical richness that ensures one will never look at the subjects in quite the same way again. My sources include Stout’s book The New Dinosaurs, John Arcudi’s copiously illustrated interview with him in The Comics Journal’s Winter 2003 Special Edition, and the websites for such places as the San Diego Natural History Museum, where one can see even more of his breathtaking murals and other paintings. I’m having so much fun looking at this material that it’s a major act of discipline to write about it.

On the novel front, I just wrapped up Jaimy Gordon’s Lord of Misrule, which won the National Book Award for Fiction this past year. I was really rooting for this book going in—Gordon is a fellow Michigander, and it’s always nice to see a small-press effort win a top literary prize over such heavily promoted major-house offerings like Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. (I haven’t read either the Franzen or Egan books in their entirety yet, but they’ve gotten their fair share of applause elsewhere.) Unfortunately, I didn’t care much for Gordon’s novel. It’s set in the lower rungs of the horse racing world, and she displays a fine eye for the milieu along with an extremely conscientious approach to characterization. However, the book ultimately seems more a work of effort and will than one of passion. The fiction-writing skill on display is astonishing, but the material never really takes flight.

Speaking of Jennifer Egan, I recently finished her short story “Safari,” which is one of the linked tales that makes up A Visit from the Goon Squad, this past year’s most honored work of fiction. (“Safari” was first published in the in January of last year; I read it as one of the selections in Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s The Best American Short Stories 2010.) The story is about the vacation in Africa a father takes his two children and his grad-student girlfriend on. Egan is a breezy prose stylist, and she does a hilarious job of rendering the tensions between the four principal characters. I especially liked her use of the grad student’s theoretical frameworks—the character is researching the links between social structure and emotional response—as a commentary on the characters’ behavior. The story is marred a bit by the use of flash-forwards in its penultimate section—the telling of how the characters turn out years down the road seems rather heavy-handed—but all is forgiven with the delightful note of irony on which the story ends. A Visit from the Goon Squad is going to have to be extraordinary in order to live up to the hype surrounding it, but if the rest of the book is as good as this preview, it just may pull it off.

I always read a short story alongside a contemporary poem—the pairings are completely random—and the companion read to “Safari” turned out to be Laura Hope-Gill’s “Jonah.” (Click here to read.) Laura was a classmate of mine while we were growing up in Florida. She’s now based in North Carolina, and has published two books of poetry in collaboration with local photographers. “Jonah” is my favorite of the poems by her I’ve read. Its retelling of the Old Testament story of the reluctant prophet seems informed by the famous bit from Isaiah 11:6: “a little child shall lead them.” Laura portrays Jonah as a young boy rather than a grown man, and he spends much of his time after being swallowed by the fish reliving his trepidation over having to grow up too soon. What makes the poem such a beautiful piece is the concluding epiphany: God’s interest in Jonah is precisely that he is not an adult; his innocent love of life, as embodied by his singing, is what delights God, and will presumably bring others to follow when God frees him. Laura’s name doesn’t tend to come up when people talk about the better contemporary poets; she’s never had a piece featured in Best American Poetry annuals, or been nominated for one of the major U.S. poetry prizes. However, poems like “Jonah” leave one thinking that her relative obscurity is something of an injustice.

I haven’t forgotten that this is a comics site, so I’ll close by discussing the last full-length comic I’ve read: Nate Powell’s Any Empire. The book isn’t scheduled to be released until July, but the folks at Top Shelf were nice enough to give me an advance look at it. I was very impressed by Powell’s last book, the Eisner-winning Swallow Me Whole, and Any Empire is another terrific effort. His cartooning is gorgeous; no one else working has his talent for capturing the rhythms and atmosphere of a story’s setting, and few can match his command of character nuance. The first half of Any Empire, which depicts the lives of three elementary-school kids in the late 1980s, is note-perfect. Powell expertly dramatizes the childhood interests that can either fall away or grow into adult preoccupations, as well as the unlikely rivalries and bonds that develop. My feelings about the book’s second half are unresolved. After a brief stop in adolescence, we follow the same characters into early adulthood, and my initial impression is that it’s a bit too abruptly developed. However, the problem may just be that I was a little thrown by the stark shift in the pacing. The individual scenes are well executed, and the problem with their not quite adding up for me may be that I found the rapid-fire tempo disorienting. I’m certainly going to read the book again, because even if the second half still doesn’t come together for me, Powell is such a brilliant talent that the initial pleasures can be counted on to retain their luster, and new ones will certainly be found. He’s the sort of artist that makes comics perhaps the most exciting art form there is today.

J.H. Williams III wants the funk for Static cover

JK Parkin — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 17:00:48 +0000

Static Shock Special

Artist J.H. Williams III shares what I believe is a variant cover for the upcoming Static Shock Special DC is putting out as a homage to Dwayne McDuffie. At least, the solicitation for the title lists Derec Donovan as the cover artist.

At any rate, it’s a wonderful piece of art that Williams says was inspired by funk music.

“I wanted to try some different things in attitude,” Williams wrote on his blog. “The Milestone characters always had this unusual quality to them, which I think made them pretty cool. And some of them seemed to have this Funk aspect to them. Now when I say Funk, I’m referring to Funk Music. So I decided to see if I could bring that more forward in attitude for this cover. The result is pretty effective. It still has this iconic quality that the genre should have, but now it feels like Funk meets Superheroes to me. Resulting in something different than what I usually do.”

You can see the steps in his creative process, from rough sketch to the final version, over on his blog. The comic comes out in June.

Comics A.M. | Kodansha International closing; Blizzard ending Tokyopop deal?

Kevin Melrose — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 14:55:39 +0000

Kodansha

Publishing | Kodansha Ltd., Japan’s largest publisher, will close its 48-year-old Kodansha International subsidiary by the end of April. The division is a separate company from the New York-based Kodansha USA, which Kodansha Ltd. established in 2008. Kodansha International specialized in English-language translations of Japanese books and original English-language books on Japanese topics, and published the occasional few manga-related title. At the February press conference at which incoming Kodansha Ltd. President Yoshinobu Noma announced the publisher’s 46.7 percent stake in Vertical Inc., he revealed the company would increase its focus on digital publishing and overseas markets. [The Japan Times, Anime News Network]

Publishing | Video game developer Blizzard Entertainment, the company behind World of Warcraft and Starcraft, is rumored to be ending its licensing agreements with troubled U.S. manga publisher Tokyopop. Although the report comes on the heels of Tokyopop’s latest round of layoffs — Troy Lewter edited many of the current Blizzard titles — the two events are apparently unrelated. [Lore Hound, via Joystiq]

Naruto, Vol. 50

Retailing | The 50th volume of Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto led BookScan’s February list of graphic novels sold in bookstores, a Top 20 dominated by manga and Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim. DC’s Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne hardcover collection was No. 2. [ICv2.com]

Creators | Christopher Irving posts his lengthy profile of the late Dwayne McDuffie, accompanied by Seth Kushner’s portraits. “I look at the new Blue Beetle, which was really well done and really entertaining, even though it didn’t sell at all,” McDuffie said. “The new things in the [DC] universe are pretty much impossible, and new things out of the universe are pretty unlikely, because people won’t try new things. I hope I’m wrong and there’s some wonderful new thing. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Static will break, but I don’t think people will try it, or that people at comics stores will even care. That book should have come out in 2002 when it was the #2 cartoon on television, and not 2010 when it was in reruns on Disney XD.” [Graphic NYC]

Jonathan Hickman

Creators | Nicholas Slayton spotlights the work of writers Jonathan Hickman, Nick Spencer and Scott Snyder. [Daily Trojan]

Creators | James Carbone briefly profiles Atomic Robo writer Brian Clevinger. [The Daily Anthenaeum]

Creators | Dean Haspiel analyzes a panel of Jack Kirby art from Devil Dinosaur #4. [Kirb Your Enthusiasm]

Comics | Berkeley Place wraps up a five-part retrospective of The Amazing Spider-Man. [Berkeley Place]

Crime | Police in Watsonville, Calif., have arrested a 16-year-old suspected of being one of five people who jumped out of a minivan Wednesday night and beat a man and stole his Superman sweater. [Santa Cruz Sentinel]

Missing Dwayne McDuffie

Michael May — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 23:05:38 +0000

Dwayne McDuffie

Tom’s already written a great tribute to Dwayne McDuffie, but I need to write something too. And I don’t use the word “need” lightly there.

Typically, when I hear about the death of someone in the comics industry, I feel sad for that person’s family and friends, perhaps think a little about my own connection to the person’s work, and that’s about it. I don’t know that I’ve ever written a personal memorial about anyone. Dwayne McDuffie is different. I met him once, but didn’t know him outside of his work. Still, I’m feeling his death like I don’t feel comics industry deaths and this column’s going to be a bit selfish as I get this out.

Like Tom, my connection with McDuffie began with Milestone. I grew up in the South where…I guess the polite way of saying it is that racial diversity was prevalent, but that doesn’t do justice to the situation. It makes it sound almost utopian, which is ridiculous. Anyone who’s spent much time in the South (or really just seen a lot of movies set there) knows how complicated and heart-breakingly frustrating it can be. But one thing that I’ll always be thankful for is that I got to know a lot of people outside of my own race. Enough so that I took it for granted.

After college I moved north to look for work and landed in a suburb that was much less diverse than where I’d grown up. Like before, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about this. I didn’t “miss” being around people unlike myself anymore than I actively enjoyed being surrounded by folks just like me, racially and culturally speaking. The issue just wasn’t on my radar.

What was on my radar was getting back into comics. I’d gone to school in a small town with no comic shop and was thrilled to live in a metropolitan area with many different places to buy comics. I dived right in and it was only a couple of years later that Dwayne McDuffie and Friends launched Milestone.

Hardware #1

I had the comics bug bad, so I went all-in on Milestone. I bought everything they published and even put together that huge mural that you could make from all the mini-posters that came in their polybagged books. Before long though, I realized I’d overextended my budget. I was also buying most of what Marvel was publishing, a lot of DC’s stuff, and everything that those Image fellows were making. I needed to cut back and did, but as I looked hard at my shopping list, I wasn’t able to quit any of Milestone’s titles.

I noticed that their marketing slogans accurately captured my experience with the company. The first of them was “Believe the Hype,” which was exactly why I’d tried out and collected all of their series (mostly without questioning what I was doing) in the first place. But though I’d started buying them because of the hype, I found that I’d kept with them because they challenged my complacency around issues of race. Not by preaching to me, but – as a later slogan said – by being about “Not Just the Color.”

Growing up around People of Color hadn’t made me sensitive or empathetic, mostly because I was as self-centered as most kids are. It wasn’t until I was in the position of missing that diversity and only being able to get it through comics – specifically Milestone’s comics – that I gave it any thought. Had Milestone chosen a different way to address the lack of diversity in superhero comics – had their comics been full of speeches and moral lessons, for instance – they wouldn’t have been as effective. But they chose to focus on stories and characters who just happened to be Black. And Asian. And Latin. And gay. In time, I quit thinking about them as minority heroes and just saw them as heroes, although among the best-written and drawn heroes of their day. Doing nothing more than telling stories, Milestone fundamentally changed the way I thought about race and diversity, and I owe an unrepayable debt to all of those creators for that. Especially to Dwayne McDuffie.

Milestone heroes (image from postbourgie.com)

I didn’t appreciate or really even know at the time how much McDuffie’s fingerprints were all over Milestone. I’m sure I still don’t adequately get it. But after Milestone quit publishing, McDuffie remained accessible and vocal through his website, message board, and a few different online columns that allowed me to follow him around for a long time. Reading his thoughts, I became aware of how much Milestone’s philosophy was mirrored by his.

As Tom wrote last week, McDuffie “understood that the best superhero stories bring the epic and fantastic down to personal levels, but he was careful to slight neither the epic nor the personal. His work spotlighted relationships as much as spectacle.” I also agree that this “reliance on fundamentals was especially refreshing.” That applied not only to McDuffie and the rest of Milestone’s storytelling, but also to their goals as a company. Creating diversity in superhero comics was an epic, fantastic objective, but McDuffie and Milestone never let it get in the way of creating personal connections between their characters and readers.

That’s the most important effect that McDuffie had on me, but it’s not the only one. The way he thought about comics – and communicated those thoughts – was contagious. I’ll always be thankful to him for a comment he made when talking about the power that continuity holds over fans. “If I didn’t read it,” he said, “it didn’t happen.” That was a hugely liberating attitude and by stealing it, I’ve saved myself countless headaches and arguments over what stories “count” or don’t. A much smaller debt than what I owe for Milestone, but just as non-repayable.

I mentioned earlier that I got to meet Dwayne McDuffie once. He wouldn’t have remembered it, I’m sure. Or maybe he would have. It depends on how many blathering fans came up to him at conventions and stammered helplessly as they tried to communicate their gratitude for his work and how much he affected them not only by what he wrote, but by who he was. Hopefully he got that a lot, because a) my doing it wouldn’t have stood out so much and b) he deserved it.

Grumpy Old Fan | Dwayne McDuffie, gone too soon

Tom Bondurant — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 23:00:29 +0000

Static #1

Dwayne McDuffie was a great writer of superhero stories, consistently producing solid, entertaining tales about characters familiar and unfamiliar, across a variety of media. He was also a vocal advocate for diversity in the superhero genre, both in terms of characters and creative personnel.

My first real exposure to Mr. McDuffie’s work was through Static, the 1993 series he co-created with fellow Milestone founders Derek T. Dingel, Denys Cowan, and Michael Davis. The Milestone panel at the ‘93 Chicago Comic-Con was handing out copies of Static’s first issue — a shiny-silver-logo variant, naturally — and I was hooked instantly. In any age Static would have stood out as an energetic and thoughtful teen-superhero serial. In the summer of 1993, though, with the speculators’ market at full swing and superhero comics chasing one fad after another, Static’s reliance on fundamentals was especially refreshing.

To some extent I think that’s what helped make Mr. McDuffie’s work so effective. He understood that the best superhero stories bring the epic and fantastic down to personal levels, but he was careful to slight neither the epic nor the personal. His work spotlighted relationships as much as spectacle. When Earth was invaded by Hawkgirl’s home planet of Thanagar (in “Starcrossed,” a 3-episode arc of “Justice League”), it tested both Hawkgirl’s loyalties and her relationship with Green Lantern. McDuffie’s tenure on Fantastic Four started by repairing the damage to the Richards’ marriage wrought by the events of Civil War. The Beyond! miniseries (a sort-of sequel to Secret Wars) was all about relationships, since it stranded a handful of superheroes on a distant planet.

Indeed, that emphasis on relationships made his time on the Justice League of America comic both tantalizing and frustrating. McDuffie’s work writing and producing the “Justice League” cartoon demonstrated clearly that he would be a great fit for the show’s four-color inspiration. When he succeeded Brad Meltzer as the regular JLA writer, I for one was eager for him to hit the ground running. Unfortunately, he spent most of his time navigating the choppy waters of intertitle continuity, having to work around things like Green Arrow and Black Canary’s wedding, the Salvation Run miniseries, and the unavailability of many characters who would have been natural fits for the JLA. When McDuffie expressed his own frustrations publicly, he was fired from the book, and current writer James Robinson took over (with, it must be noted, a fluid, esoteric roster of his own) not long afterwards.

Reading McDuffie’s plans for JLA after the fact revealed both his own frustrations with, and hopes for, what he described as “DC Comics’ flagship book.”

I do get frustrated, but it comes with the job. The nature of monthly comics has changed drastically over the past 20 years. JLA used to be THE place to go to see the big guns together, dealing with the gravest threats in the DCU. Now there are several big event crossovers a year, and those titles are where the huge stories happen. So I have to tell stories that feed into and come out of those events. I’d prefer if, as on Justice League Unlimited, I could tell stories that were at the center of the characters lives, but that was a very different circumstance. JLA the comic is part of a larger patchwork, and my mandate is to support the bigger story of the DCU.

McDuffie had apparently planned at least two years’ worth of JLA, but kept having to delay and/or change those plans with each new crossover which affected the team.

Still, what he did write for JLA was pretty fascinating, even moreso in hindsight. Once the A-listers like Superman and Wonder Woman were gone, McDuffie’s version of “Cap’s Kooky Quartet” included Dr. Light (Kimiyo Hoshi), Firestorm (Jason Rusch) and Green Lantern (John Stewart), Vixen, and Zatanna. This decidedly untraditional lineup turned out to be both entertaining and effective, with the veteran Dr. Light playing well off the relatively-inexperienced Firestorm.

It sounds somewhat selfish for me, a mere fan, to boil Dwayne McDuffie’s death down to “I’m sorry about his JLA situation,” and I certainly don’t mean to do that. Still, his struggles against the demands of corporately-owned superhero comics run through much of his career, especially informing his Milestone work. From time to time he would return to the metaphor of a caged bird who “mistook being out of his cage … for being free.”

Accordingly, Mr. McDuffie’s untimely death saddens me partly because it seems like he left a lot of unfinished business with DC and Justice League — but on a more meaningful level, his death deprives the superhero genre of a gifted storyteller who, additionally, always had something substantive to say. While his last JLA lineup might have been a group of B- and C-listers with whom he probably wasn’t entirely satisfied, in the end they were capable, confident and (by the way) diverse; and I’d have enjoyed seeing them continue as the Justice League.

See, I trusted Dwayne McDuffie to do right by both the characters he wrote and the readers he entertained. I respected him as a professional and was always glad to see his name in the credits. One of his “Justice League” two-parters, “The Terror Beyond,” is on its face a pretty straightforward fight with a Cthulhu stand-in — but look closer, and it’s a terrific pastiche of Marvel’s Defenders, with Aquaman, Doctor Fate, and Solomon Grundy subbing for Namor, Doctor Strange, and the Hulk. Grundy’s imitation is the most shameless — by which I mean the most fun — since he fights the Army (and a mustachioed general), says “smash” a lot, and even calls Hawkgirl “bird-nose.” Nevertheless, as always, relationships are key: the Leaguers struggle to trust Aquaman (not on the team at this point), and Grundy and Hawkgirl end up bonding.

In hindsight, it’s eminently appropriate to note that his script for “Destroyer,” the “JLU” series finale, includes Superman observing “[w]hat we have here is a rare opportunity for me to cut loose.” For many fans of DC’s characters, the “Justice League” cartoon was an example of what Mr. McDuffie could accomplish, free from arbitrary or capricious restrictions — and I don’t mean Easter eggs like putting Steve Ditko-created characters in the same scene, or having the patriotically-costumed Steel sling a round shield as a weapon. “Destroyer” is a twenty-minute tour de force depicting an Apokoliptian invasion and the resulting Darkseid/Superman battle, but it turns on Lex Luthor understanding Darkseid’s most fervent wish. (It also includes another immortal Superman line, “Oh, come on! This is Lex-flippin’-Luthor!”) Luthor’s actions in the episode’s climax are a natural product of what drives him as a character — intellectual curiosity, a thirst for power (which translates here into stopping someone else from ruling the world), and an almost pathological need to one-up Superman. Given the chance, of course Luthor would side with Superman in getting rid of Darkseid — but, as in “Destroyer,” he’d do it on his terms.

That’s how I’ll remember Dwayne McDuffie — as someone fluent in the language of superheroes, who used those skills to tell exciting, meaningful stories. Mr. McDuffie’s love for the genre showed in every script, regardless of what was going on behind the scenes. As DC goes forward with a new Static Shock series, and as it finds ways to use the other Milestone characters, I hope that all involved will be guided not only by what Mr. McDuffie left on the page, but also what went unwritten. Dwayne McDuffie is free now, and his life should inspire those who will come after.

I’ll close with a line from the first issue of Static which keeps coming to mind. It’s the end of Static’s introductory scene, a little tussle with some high-school punks hassling our hero’s friend Frieda. Having saved the day, Static’s flying away on his charged-up trash-can lid, when over the shoulder he calls out to her: “[W]hen you talk about this to all your friends, be sure to mention my winning smile. I never hear enough about that….”

Rest in peace, Mr. McDuffie.

Quote of the day | Milestone’s Derek Dingle, on Dwayne McDuffie

Kevin Melrose — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 19:00:36 +0000

Dwayne McDuffie

“Milestone was the shared vision that we would provide the world with images that had been excluded from the mainstream for decades. Dwayne was the key to making that dream a reality to our company and comic book fans, as well as those who sought tales of adventure. [...] Dwayne realized the importance of creating such images because they represented heroes and opportunities. He also saw comic books and animation as a way of dealing with such issues as racism, sexism, gang violence, gun control and conflict resolution without sacrificing entertainment value.”

– Milestone Media co-founder Derek T. Dingle, on his friend and business partner Dwayne McDuffie, who passed away Monday at age 49

Fellow creators and fans remember Dwayne McDuffie

JK Parkin — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:00:37 +0000

I’m still in shock over the sudden, tragic death of comics writer, Milestone Media co-founder and animation producer Dwayne McDuffie, as I’m sure many of his fans, friends and fellow creators are. I’ve rounded up some thoughts and memories from some of those folks, as well as a few items of note about memorials and some of his work.

If you’re attending the Emerald City Comicon March 4-6, they’ve announced a memorial panel remembering McDuffie that will take place Saturday at 7 p.m. in Room 4C1-2. Per writer Mark Waid, C2E2 is also planning to hold one.
Both Heidi MacDonald and Rich Johnston posted pages featuring the parakeet metaphor that McDuffie first introduced in Hardware #1 — a scene that, for me personally, sparked one of those lengthy late-night discussions about society, racism, politics and a whole lot of other things with my older brother. As Heidi points out, McDuffie revisited it in both X-O Manowar and at the end of the Milestone Forever two-parter, basically bookending the life of the Milestone Universe.
The Weekly Crisis, meanwhile, looks at a poignant page from McDuffie’s more recent Fantastic Four run.
The good folks at the Project: Rooftop site have declared “McDuffie Week” at their site, and have put out the call for redesigns of Static. Dean Trippe writes: “Dwayne’s work in the field of comics and animation was near-universally respected. His knowledge and understanding of the DCU heroes in particular, always meant a lot to me. He worked for Marvel, DC, founded Milestone along with Denys Cowan, Michael Davis and Derek T. Dingle, achieved more respect and admiration as a screenwriter for Justice League Unlimited and other DC animated projects, faithfully bringing the light of our heroes to the non-comics-reading public. Dwayne has left us far too soon, with too many wonderful stories left untold.”

Comic Book Resources has a collection of reactions from various creators. Here are a few more that creators and bloggers have posted on their own sites; also, Tom Spurgeon has a Collective Memory post with more that he’ll keep updating. You can also follow the hashtag #DwayneMcDuffie on Twitter, where McDuffie was a trending topic earlier this week.

Writer Peter David: “I will never forget sitting in his office as we worked out storylines. There was more than just his physical presence (he was well over six feet tall). He seemed to radiate confidence in his abilities, which was entirely warranted, and he was determined to roll with whatever curves Cartoon Network might throw his way and turn them into the best stories possible. He had boundless enthusiasm not only for his work, but for the sheer creative process. To say he will be missed is to understate it. I offer condolences not only to his family, but to the entirety of fandom for losing one of the great ones.”
Wruter Warren Ellis: “We talked – and occasionally argued – for years, at my message board. I had huge respect for both him and his work. Later, he was good enough to hire me to write a JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED cartoon for him. I had a terrific time doing that: turned out he was great to work with, too. if you had to pick out ten people in this poxy business whom you’d stand in front of when the shit started flying, Dwayne would be on most people’s lists.”
Artist J.H. Williams III: “He was always one of the best creators this industry had the luxury of claiming. His work is memorable not just for his forward thinking in terms of ethnic characters, but also for the coolness that always seem to come along for the ride with his stories. I had the fortunate but very brief time to have worked with him while Milestone was on the rise for DC Comics. It was Milestone that really seemed to be willing to give me some of my first shots at being a professional artist. My gratitude for that can never be forgotten, and neither will Dwayne’s offerings.”
Artist Colleen Doran: “Dwayne was incredibly cool to me at Milestone. Nothing about the demise of the series was Milestone’s fault in any way. I was not only treated with respect and kindness at every turn, but the publisher paid me a very fair kill fee. I really liked the people at Milestone, and Dwayne sent me a wonderful letter about my work on the project, which I treasure.”
Writer J.M. DeMatteis: “I didn’t know Dwayne well, but I had tremendous respect for him—both as a writer and a man. Dwayne was close friends with my old buddy Stan Berkowitz—they worked together on Justice League Unlimited, among other projects—and the three of us would sometimes go out for lunch or dinner when I visited Los Angeles. The last time I actually saw Dwayne was in April of 2010 (we shared an extraordinary Persian meal and Dwayne graciously, generously, picked up the check), but we worked together last summer, when I wrote a Ben 10 script for him. Dwayne was, as always, fiercely intelligent, profoundly creative, and a genuine pleasure to collaborate with.”
Writer/artist Gene Yang: “Dwayne McDuffie’s writing first caught my eye when I was in high school. He was the writer behind Damage Control, a Marvel Comics mini-series about a business firm that cleaned up cities after big superhero fights. I’ve followed his career off and on ever since. When he started Milestone Media with a group of his friends, I bought all the books he wrote. I admired his guts, I admired his business sense, and most of all I admired his stories. My son and I are currently watching Justice League episodes that he wrote and edited. At Comic-Con a couple of years ago, I was asked to participate on a panel discussion with him. I pestered the moderator to seat me next to him, just so I could shake his hand.”
Marvel.com’s Ben Morse: “But then, if you look at the professional career of Dwayne McDuffie, you’ll see a guy who has always done things that appeal and matter to him and achieved success along the way not necessarily because he always made the decisions would necessarily make the most money, but because he was so talented you couldn’t stop him. Read any interview with Dwayne about the creation of Milestone and you’ll have little doubt it was an endeavor he embarked upon because in his mind it needed to be done and there was creative potential there, not because it was going to make him rich.”
Blogger Chris Sims: “He was a hero of mine. He was a guy who worked hard, who set out to change the world of comics for the better while still telling great stories, and he succeeded. He wrote with skill, social conscience and a sense of humor, three things that you rarely find in one person, especially one as prolific as he was. He wasn’t afraid to call things out for being ridiculous, and more than that, he did it with honesty, even when he caught hell for it. And because of that, he was one of the creators that I always felt comfortable writing about, whether praise or criticism, because I felt like if I followed his example of professionalism, honesty and humor, he’d get it. He inspired me, as much through how he acted on a personal level as through his work.”
Writer/blogger Kevin Church: “A lot of comics creators (and readers) use the most benign platitudes when it comes to race and gender in superhero books. They say that it doesn’t matter if the latest incarnation of a legacy character is black or white or asian, that it’s not important to the story if Black Manta is a woman this go-round or whatever. Because, you know, people are people, you know? Dwayne McDuffie was hard-headed and impassioned enough to say “Yes, it does.” He brought the experience he had as a black kid growing up in Detroit in the 70s and 80s to every project he got his hands on by choosing directly not to emulate what he’d seen in the comic books he read, but by creating what he wished he had read.”
Blogger J. Caleb Mozzocco: I didn’t know Dwayne McDuffie the person at all, but I’ve long known Dwayne McDuffie the comics writer (and, to a lesser extent, the animation writer), and I spent a lot of time with that Dwayne McDuffie. Relating the death of a real person with a real family and real friends always seems a bit selfish to me, but then, I think the fact that the passing of someone you don’t really know can still affect you in some small way can be a compelling indicator of just how important that particular person is to the world. Certainly in the case of McDuffie, he was very important in our part of the world. It saddens me to think I’m never going to read another new McDuffie-written comic book, although I’m somewhat heartened by the fact that there are still chunks of his decades-long bibliography I’ve yet to experience personally.
Blogger Tom Foss: “McDuffie was one of the best. He was the mastermind behind Milestone Comics, an incredibly underrated imprint that has given us quite a lot of interesting characters and poignant stories. He was a key component of the awesomeness of the DCAU shows, and I think he understands the core DC characters better than most.”
Blogger Johnny Bacardi: “Back in 1993, when my then-11-year-old son wanted me to start getting him comics to read on my weekly Wednesday run, some of the titles he liked were DC’s teen heroes- Robin, Impulse, Superboy. One other that caught his eye was the series above, Static. Now, since I was as much a comics geek back then as I ever was, I read not only the titles I bought, but the titles I bought for him (he liked X-Men, Spawn, Gen13, and other hot books back then too- I didn’t read them often) as well, and I enjoyed Static. McDuffie only scripted the first four issues, along with the mysterious Robert L. Washington III, but was instrumental in creating the character with artist J.P. Leon, the first place I saw his soon-to-be excellent work as well.”
Blogger John Hogan: McDuffie’s work on Icon and the rest of the Milestone Media characters in the early ’90s was incredibly pivotal to me. The debate that went on in the pages of Icon (the philosophies of Martin Luther King vs. those of Malcolm X, for example) was so incredibly well done that I would eagerly await each new issue. McDuffie was one of the comics creators who pushed the envelope and brought comics into a new age, pushing superheroes further than before.

Comics A.M. | Hereville up for Nebula; remembering Dwayne McDuffie

Kevin Melrose — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 16:28:13 +0000

Hereville

Awards | Barry Deutsch’s Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword has been nominated for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America as part of the prestigious Nebula Awards. “When the nice lady from the Nebula committee called me, she said this is ‘essentially the Nebula Award for young adult books’,” Deutsch writes. Although graphic novels are specifically mentioned in the Andre Norton Award guidelines, this appears to be the first time one has been nominated. The award was established in 2005 in honor of prolific science fiction and fantasy author Andre Norton, who passed away that year. The winners will be announced May 21 in Washington, D.C., during the Nebula Awards banquet. [SFFWA]

Passings | We’ll collect reactions later today to the sudden death of respected comics and animation writer Dwayne McDuffie — Comic Book Resources has remembrances from more than a dozen industry figures — but I wanted to go ahead and point to a handful of links: The Associated press obituary; a few words from Christopher Irving, accompanied by a beautiful portrait of McDuffie photographed by Seth Kushner on Feb. 13; the origin of Static; and a look at Spider-Man anti-drug PSA comics written by McDuffie. There’s also McDuffie’s message board, where he interacted candidly with fans on a regular basis. Two threads are devoted to the news of his death and memories of the creator they often referred to as “the Maestro.” The site’s administrator has posted a message last night on the main page: “Dwayne’s family and friends would like to thank everyone for the outpouring of condolences. They are much appreciated in this difficult time.” [Dwayne McDuffie]

Amazon Kindle

Digital comics | Todd Allen examines now Amazon’s pricing policies are forcing some publishers to rethink using the Kindle as a platform for their comics. [Publishers Weekly]

Digital comics | Gus G. Sentementes spotlights the move by Diamond Comic Distributors into digital distribution with its recently announced partnership with iVerse Media. [The Baltimore Sun]

Publishing | Poland’s foreign minister has ordered the pulping of a controversial graphic novel about the composer Chopin commissioned by the country’s Berlin embassy. Designed to promote Polish culture to German schoolchildren, the comic included a profanity-laden story in which a modern-day Chopin goes to a concert at a prison with his skinhead friend. The approach, intended to make Chopin more accessible, backfired, leading to the destruction of all 2,000 copies. [Warsaw Business Journal, TheNews]

Creators | Geoff Boucher chats with veteran artist Joe Staton about taking the reins, with writer Mike Curtis, of the Dick Tracy comic strip: “My involvement with Dick Tracy and Chester Gould goes back about as far as is possible. My mother said that when I was 3, I was found in the kitchen floor with the Sunday funnies, trying to copy a picture of Tracy. That would have been in 1951. Everything I’ve learned or developed in terms of my art since then has been built on those first encounters with Tracy. That’s why I’m not trying to ‘ape’ Chester Gould’s style (or Rick Fletcher’s, or Dick Locher’s, for that matter). I just always have the faith that when I get down to basics, I’ll find Tracy waiting for me.” [Hero Complex]

21: The Story of Roberto Clemente

Creators | Cartoonist Wilfred Santiago discusses his upcoming graphic biography 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente, which will be released in April by Fantagraphics Books. [Publishers Weekly]

Creators | Alex Dueben talks with Camilla d’Errico about her influences, art school and her new art book Femina and Fauna. [Suicide Girls]

Creators | Collaborators Joshua Hale Fialkov and Rahsan Ekedal discuss Echoes, their new miniseries from Top Cow Productions’ Minotaur Press imprint. Note: The first issue is being serialized here at Robot 6. [Major Spoilers]

Creators | Thom Atkinson briefly spotlights Frank Quitely, who’s holding a workshop today as part of the Glasgow Film Festival. [The Skinny]

Creators | King City creator Brandon Graham has moved his always-entertaining and informative blog to a new location. [Royal Boiler]

‘It all comes out right in the end’: A review of the All-Star Superman movie

Chris Mautner — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 16:00:51 +0000

All-Star Superman

Warner Bros’ animated adaptation of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman is so reverent and faithful toward the source material that the film, to a certain extent, feels like a pale copy of its inspiration.

That’s not necessarily a damning criticism. Bruce Timm and company took the right approach in attempting to get as close a conversion from page to screen as possible (to do otherwise would have pleased no one). But the comic itself is so rich in detail and episodic in nature that even a trim, streamlined version like this that still manages to hit a number of the right high points feels a bit flabby in comparison. Saying “the book is better” is a rather easy cheat for a critic — the book is almost always better, but I suspect that fans of the comic won’t be able to watch this without running a compare/contrast checklist in their head and find the film coming up a wee bit short. The good news is that those coming fresh to the material probably won’t notice anything wrong at all.

I wasn’t kidding when I said the film is as faithful to the comic as possible. Screenwriter Dwayne McDuffie lifts the dialogue verbatim from the comic whenever he has the opportunity, and he has plenty of them. What’s more, while the animation is a bit sleeker and cleaner than Quitely’s rough, minimalist pen lines, the animators do their best to mimic the artist’s unique character expressions, posture and body types throughout the film and copy his panel composition whenever the opportunity arises. Many fans will no doubt thrill at seeing sequences like Superman kissing a super-powered Lois on the moon not only animated but done as a near-xerox copy of the original, iconic panel.

Lois and Kal-El take flight

More importantly, director Sam Liu manages to maintain the overall contemplative tone and atmosphere of Morrison and Quitely’s masterpiece. It’s certainly one of the most subdued, nakedly sincere and emotional films they’ve ever done, at least compared to past WB/DC films like Under the Red Hood and Superman/Batman: Apocalypse. Matching and maintaining this sort of wistful, inspirational attitude from the comic without coming off as corny or false must have been exceedingly tricky, so kudos to Liu and company for getting that rather essential part right.

Indeed, certain sequences, like Clark Kent’s interview with Luthor in prison manage to capture the comic’s balletic farce rather well while still adding some of new bits to it. Occasionally they even manage to top the comic — there’s a gag involving Superman’s star-dense Fortress of Solitude key that actually works better animated than it did in print.

But with only a 76-minute running time, it’s not terribly surprising that a number of sequences would get edited out. As one might expect, the film hones its focus on the Superman/Lex Luthor/Lois Lane triangle, with (in case you’re not familiar with the over-arcing story) Superman finally falling terminally ill to one of Luthor’s traps and attempting to put his affairs in order, especially with Lois, before his time is up.

Lex Luthor

The comic, of course, was as much an ode to the classic Superman stories of the past as it was an exploration of the character itself and what makes him so mythic. Thus, the filmmakers attempt to nod toward this by inserting some of the less plot-essential sequences like the battle of wits between Sampson, Atlas and Superman. The one sequence that unfortunately sticks out like a sore thumb is the one involving the Kryptonian astronauts Bar-El and Lilo. It’s not one of my favorite bits from the comic, and my own preference would have been to ditch that for perhaps the Jimmy Olsen sequence in issue #3 instead, or something from issue #10, where he cures children’s cancer, creates a new pocket universe and saves a girl from committing suicide. The choice to include Bar-El and Lilo makes thematic sense — their arrogant behavior provides a nice contrast to Superman’s own humility — but it does underscore the original material’s episodic nature and make the film feel like it’s trying to take a deep breath before moving on to its finale.

I usually don’t have much to say about the voice work in these films unless I hate it, but everyone does a rather good job this time around. James Denton and Christina Hendricks give a nice gravitas to their characters and the interplay between them works rather well. Special note, however, should be given to Anthony LaPaglia, who nails Luthor’s quiet arrogance and jealousy rather well.

What big hands you have Kal-El

Usually the special features sections of these DVDs are an embarrassment, with lots of unwarranted self-congratulation and allegedly in-depth looks at the histories of various characters and comics that are as shallow as dishwater. For once, however, the supplemental materials are worthwhile.

The main feature is a documentary titled “Superman Now” that features Morrison talking about the origins of the original 12-issue comic and how it came together, as well as a video segment where he shows off his original sketches for the series and talks about how they evolved over time. Even if you’ve heard Morrison talk about these things in past interviews, it’s still entertaining to see him mull over them once again.

There’s also a commentary track featuring Morrison and Timm that vacillates between insightful and glad-handed compliments, where each tells the other how much they love their work. Despite the schmoozing and occasional quiet lapses, there are notable moments, as when Morrison talks about the larger themes he was trying to address in the comic or Timm talks about how tricky it was to capture Quietly’s style in animation. It’s especially interesting to note Timm’s hesitancy about whether this more subdued, thoughtful type of material will play well before the traditional superhero fanboy audience. Would the same crowd, he asks, that cheered at the violence on display in Red Hood appreciate a more restrained film like this? I’d like to think so, but it seemed telling to me that Timm took the time to pose the question at all.

There’s also a preview of the next DCU film, a hodge-podge of Green Lantern stories titled Emerald Knights, no doubt designed as a tie-in to the upcoming live-action film. The most notable (and, honestly, unsurprising) revelation was that they plan on adapting Alan Moore’s “Mogo” story. They’d kind of be silly not to.

Despite my reservations, All-Star Superman is an entertaining movie and should please fans whether they’ve read the original mini-series or not. But there’s also no doubt that the film’s struggles to capture the particular mood of the comic and determine what to prune and what to keep make the film’s pacing a bit bumpy, to put it charitably. It would have been nice to expect a film equal in stature to the comic — nice, but unfair and more than the WB animators could no doubt execute given their financial limitations. At best the film is an enjoyable supplement, one that will allow fans to contemplate just what was so special about the original work that drew them toward it in the first place.

Denton, Hendricks, LaPaglia cast in animated All-Star Superman DVD

JK Parkin — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 20:30:05 +0000

Absolute All-Star Superman

James Denton (Desperate Housewives), Christina Hendricks (Mad Men) and Anthony LaPaglia (Without a Trace, Happy Feet) have been cast as the voices of Superman, Lois Lane and Lex Luthor in the upcoming All-Star Superman original animated movie. Warner Bros. announced the direct-to-DVD project in San Diego this past summer.

Bruce Timm is executive producing, and Sam Liu, who directed Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, will direct this one as well. Dwayne McDuffie, who wrote Crisis on Two Earths, Justice League Unlimited and many other animated programs (not to mention comics) wrote the script.

The DVD will be released next spring.

SDCC ’10 | There’s got to be a morning after

Kevin Melrose — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:48:49 +0000

Absolute All-Star Superman

A quick round-up of Comic-Con updates, additional announcements and interesting links:

• Warner Bros. Animation officially announced a DC Universe Original Movie based on All-Star Superman, the award-winning series by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. The direct-to-DVD animated feature, set for release in spring 2011, is written by Dwayne McDuffie, who calls the series “one of the greatest stories in comic book history.”

• ICv2.com has additional details about one of the more interesting announcements from the convention, Fantagraphics’ partnership with Disney to publish the complete Mickey Mouse comic strips by Floyd Gottfredson. The collections will be released beginning in May at a rate of two volumes a year. They will retail for $29.99.

• Tom Spurgeon rounds up the selections from the Thursday panel “The Best and Worst of Manga 2010.”

• Speaking of Spurgeon, his “Notes from the Convention Floor” posts are, as usual, well worth reading: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4.

• I enjoyed Todd VanDerWerff’s coverage of Comic-Con for The A.V. Club, including his visit to Artists’ Alley, and this broader post in which he questions whether the convention is “worth serious news coverage.”

• In the midst of Comic-Con, the Los Angeles Times rolled out a look at digital comics and their potential impact on the industry. “Comic book stores have a very close relationship with their customers,” says author and critic Douglas Wolk. “But the old-school collectors are aging, and it may be that the print comic goes away eventually. There is an entire generation of readers who is not interested in physical copies.”

• Grant Morrison chats briefly with IGN.com about his newly announced series Batman Inc.

• Is it just me, or are the round-ups of convention “winners and losers” pretty much meaningless? I’m sure Snakes on a Plane was declared a “winner” of whichever Comic-Con it was promoted — 2006, maybe? — and we all know how that played out.

Milestone Forever brings much-needed closure, finally … maybe?

JK Parkin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:33:32 +0000

Milestone Forever

According to this post over at DC’s The Source blog, original Milestone Comics editor-in-chief Dwayne McDuffie is teaming with several artists who worked on the original Milestone Comics line back in the 1990s to wrap up the stories that were being told in those books before the line was canceled. It also sounds like it’ll somehow transition the characters from their separate Milestone-verse to the DCU proper, where we’ve already seen them show up in the pages Justice League and Teen Titans.

McDuffie will team with John Paul Leon, Mark Bright, Chris Cross and Denys Cowan to wrap up the stories from Hardware, Icon, Shadow Cabinet, Blood Syndicate and Static. I figured we were well past ever seeing these characters again in their original environment, so this is welcome news, even if it is “a bittersweet tale that chronicles the literal end of a universe.”

SDCC ’09 | Exclusive comic stuff to buy, plus some creator schedules

JK Parkin — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:29:07 +0000

The San Diego Comic-Con kicks off with Preview Night a week from this Wednesday. If you are a publisher, creator, retailer or any other kind of exhibitor who would like to let folks know about any special plans you have for the show (panels, signing schedules, exclusives, debuts, etc.) drop me an email and I’ll run it here.

Also, a reminder: the programming schedule is out, so you can start putting together your to do list. This post at the Daily Cross Hatch, which includes a rundown of what various indie comic creators will be doing at the show, might also be helpful.

Creators | Remember those Colleen Coover Clue drawings Kevin linked to in May? Turns out she’s turned them into blank cards and will have them at the show. She’ll also have some new buttons.

Creators | Joëlle Jones will have a new sketchbook featuring the seven deadly sins at the show.

Comics | Wildstorm will distribute a free primer on their universe of characters — Authority, Gen13, etc. — at the con. Titled This Is WildStorm Universe #0, the book will lay out “where each WildStorm Universe team began, where they are now… and offering a few hints about their future.”

Organizations | The Hero Initiative will have their new T-shirt available at the show.

Creators | David Petersen will have two new products available at the show: The Mouse Guard Winter 1152 Hardcover and his 2009 sketchbook.

Graphic novels | Last year a group of animators from Disney published an anthology called Who is Rocket Johnson? that was only sold in San Diego. This year they’re doing a follow-up, called What is Torch Tiger?, an all-ages book in which every artist answers the question: “What is Torch Tiger?” It will be sold exclusively at booth 2302 in San Diego and is limited to 1,300 copies. Check out a preview here.

Publishers | Marvel has posted their panel schedule.

Creators | Wanna know where to find Ben Templesmith at the show? Check out the cool “postery type image” he created for it —>

Creators | Dwayne McDuffie has posted his panel and signing schedule for the con, which includes a signing at the Comic Relief booth.

Creators | Sonny Liew has also posted where he can be found at the show.

ComicsLive | A guide to next week’s comic-related events

JK Parkin — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:42:00 +0000

Welcome to ComicsLive, a guide to upcoming signings, conventions and more. If you’d like to submit an event for inclusion, please email them directly to me. Please include the venue, city and state, start time, event details and any related websites where we can send folks for more information. Virtual events, like online creator chats, are also welcome.

Friday, July 3

Bloomington, Minn | CONvergence — “a celebration of the funny side of science fiction and fantasy” — continues through Sunday and will have Dwayne McDuffie and the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew as its special guests, among others. More details can be found here.

Brooklyn, NY | The comic shop Rocketship will host a release party for local artist Adam Suerte’s latest comic, starting at 8 p.m. Details here.

White River Junction, Vermont | First Friday Book Release party, with four new books debuting by Colleen Frakes, Denis St. John, Morgan Pielli and Jen Vaughn at Revolution. Details here.

Wednesday, July 8

Chicago | Green Lantern inker Christian Alamy will sign at Challengers Comics. Details here.

New York | A “glittery, burlesque-inspired” launch party for Molly Crabapple and John Leavitt’s Scarlett Takes Manhattan at the Slipper Room. It’s a free event, but an RSVP is mandatory; details here.

More in July

July 10 | Michael Kupperman in Brooklyn

July 10 | Bay Area cartoonists art exhibit kicks off in San Francisco

July 10-12 | Screaming TikiCon in Cleveland

July 11 | The Asian American ComiCon in New York

July 11 | 100 Bullets event benefiting the Hero Initiative in Los Angeles

July 11 | Peter Bagge rocks Seattle

July 15 | Geoff Johns in Anaheim

July 16 | Dave McKean in Chicago

July 17-23 | Watchmen director’s cut screenings in L.A., NYC, Dallas and Minneapolis

July 18 | March of Dimes Sketch Benefit in Puyallup, Wash.

July 18 | Keith Chow, Alex Tarampi, Jerry Ma and Larry Hama in Baltimore

July 18-19 | Frank Santoro teaches a class on line drawing and composition in New York

July 22 | Spider-Man #600 exhibit in San Francisco

July 23-26 | Comic-Con International in San Diego

Dwayne McDuffie fired from Justice League

JK Parkin — Fri, 29 May 2009 01:36:38 +0000

Justice League of America #33

Writer Dwayne McDuffie revealed today on his message board that he’s been fired from Justice League of America, saying “it was my own doing.”

His dismissal came after “Lying in the Gutters” columnist Rich Johnston “ran a compilation of two years or so of my answers to fans’ questions on the DC Comics discussion boards,” McDuffie posted, referencing this May 4th column. “I’m told my removal had nothing to with either the quality of my work or the level of sales, rather with my revelation of behind-the-scenes creative discussions.”

If you look through the column, you’ll see several statements that show McDuffie’s frustrations with working on the title, from comments on how the Anansi storyline was “about my not having control of the stories in my book” to remarks about how DC’s big guns — from Superman and Batman to Green Arrow and Captain Marvel — weren’t available for his use.

“I’m doing ‘Cap’s Kooky Quartet’,” McDuffie wrote. “Of course, in this case Captain America isn’t available, either.”

McDuffie did share some “what might have been” thoughts on JLA:

I have to say I’m a bit disappointed, because next summer was planned to feature a JLA-driven crossover, where my book’s story line would have been the driving force. I’m distressed by where I left Black Canary, as my intention was to use the current subplot to strengthen her character and relationships with the new membership, and instead I’m leaving her at the bottom of a hole I’d intended to rebuild her from. I was also just about to get a regular artist for the first time since I’ve been on the book, which would have been nice. That said, I’m sure DC’s going to put together a creative team that will generate major excitement around JLA, which is as it should be.

He also said he has a pretty full plate, as he’s editing Cartoon Network’s Ben 10: Alien Force and the upcoming Ben 10: Evolutions series. He’s also working on a new project called Milestone Forever for DC, just finished a video game script, and is writing a direct-to-DVD animated feature for Warner Animation.

As for Justice League, it looks like Issue 33, which came out today, is his last. Len Wein is writing the next few issues, and was doing so initially to give McDuffie a break while he worked on his various TV projects.