India
Comics A.M. | Michael George loses appeal for new trial
Michael George
Legal | Former comics retailer Michael George has lost his appeal for a new trial. He was convicted twice for the 1990 murder of his wife, first in 2008 and then in a 2011 retrial. George is serving life in prison without parole. [The Macomb Daily]
Creators | John Sutter profiles Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat, whose hands were broken by government troops in an (unsuccessful) attempt to keep him from ever drawing again. [CNN]
Creators | Michael Diana, the first artist in the United States to be convicted of obscenity (for his comic Boiled Angel), returns to Miami after more than 20 years for a show of his work at the Miami Art Museum — which paid his remaining fines so he could enter the state without risk of arrest. [Miami New Times]
Comics A.M. | Singapore cartoonist arrested; crowdfunding scam
Leslie Chew cartoon
Legal | Singapore cartoonist Leslie Chew was arrested last week on charges of sedition, held over the weekend, and released on S$10,000 bail. His cellphone and computer were also confiscated. The charges stem from two cartoons on Chew’s Demon-cratic Singapore Facebook page. [Yahoo! News Singapore]
Crowdfunding | Chris Sims tells the truly bizarre tale of a crowdfunding scam: Someone copied Ken Lowery and Robert Wilson IV’s Kickstarter campaign for Like a Virus, including the video, and made it into an IndieGoGo campaign, presumably planning to pocket the money and run. [Comics Alliance]
Comics A.M. | Manga creators team up to help devastated region
InuYasha
Manga | Eight manga creators, including Rumiko Takahashi (InuYasha, Maison Ikkoku), will create new comics featuring the characters they are known for and donate the royalties to the effort to rebuild the Tohoku region of Japan, which was devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The fund-raiser is being spearheaded by Gallery Fake creator Fujihiko Hosono. [The Japan Times]
Awards | While we were all busy at New York Comic Con, the Frankfurt Book Fair was going on in Germany, and Torsten Adair rounds up the comics awards that were given at the fair to German and international creators. [The Beat]
Conventions | Christopher Spata talks to some of the attendees at this past weekend’s Tampa Bay Comic Con, including the parents of a 1-year-old who was in costume—and already has a room full of superhero items. [Tampa Bay Online]
Comics A.M. | Penguin Group to launch kids’ graphic novel line
Penguin Group
Publishing | The Penguin Group plans to wade into the market for children’s graphic novels with a new line aimed at middle-grade and young-adult readers. “Clearly it’s a huge, growing market, the kid’s graphic novel market,” Penguin’s Rich Johnson told ICv2 at New York Comic Con. “You see those titles making the bestsellers list all the time. So we are looking to do work in that area to get more kids reading comics.” [ICv2]
Creators | Feisty as ever, Stan Lee talks about his World of Heroes YouTube channel and breaks up the camera crew a couple of times in an interview shot New York Comic Con. [MTV Geek]
Comics A.M. | Council OKs San Diego Convention Center expansion
Comic-Con International
Conventions | San Diego City Council has given final approval to the planned $520 million expansion of the San Diego Convention Center, viewed as necessary to keeping Comic-Con International in the city past 2015. The project still faces a legal challenge to a financing scheme involving a hotel-room surtax, as well as state regulatory approval, leading the city attorney to caution that the targeted 2017 completion date is just “a goal.” Whether Comic-Con organizers can be convinced to sign another three-year extension to their contract remains a big question. [NBC San Diego]
Conventions | Most of Heidi MacDonald’s article about New York Comic Con is behind a paywall at Publishers Weekly, but she pulls out some stats at The Beat: Ticket sales are up 190 percent over this time last year. As the capacity of the Javits Center is somewhere south of 110,000 people, this means the ReedPOP folks won’t sell any more tickets than last year, but they are selling out faster. Three-day and four-day passes are already gone, only Friday tickets remain, and ReedPOP vice president Lance Fensterman expects everything to be sold out by the time the show begins. [The Beat]
Comics A.M. | Fun Home musical to open in New York City
From "Fun Home"
Graphic novels | A musical based on Alison Bechdel’s acclaimed 2006 graphic memoir Fun Home will open the fall season of the Public Lab series of the Public Theater in New York City. Featuring music by four-time Tony Award nominee Jeanine Tesori and book and lyrics by Tony nominee Lisa Kron, the show is scheduled to run from Oct. 17 through Nov. 4 at the Shiva Theater. [The New York Times, The Public Theater]
Creators | Gilbert Hernandez guests on the comiXologist podcast to talk about Love and Rockets and what he has been reading lately. [comiXology]
Creators | Brian Wood and Ming Doyle talk about their new comic Mara, which will debut from Image Comics in December and features a volleyball player with superpowers in a world where sports and warfare are no longer so far apart. While Wood is not really a sports fan, he is fascinated by the portrayal of athletes in popular culture: “‘This is tied into the superhero thing, recognizing parallels between the two,’ Wood says. ‘I think there’s a lot to talk about there and part of me feels I’ll need more than one comic series to do it in. We’ll see.’” [USA Today]
Indian cartoonist free on bail, will fight sedition charge
Indian cartoonist Aseem Trivedi is free on bail today after being jailed Saturday in Mumbai on charges of sedition and insulting Indian national symbols. The case, which stems from a display of cartoons at a protest in December and on his website Cartoons Against Corruption, has led to a widespread public outcry within the country.
Trivedi was arrested after a complaint was filed by a law student, Amit Katarnayea:
“I saw the exhibition of cartoons at the protest organised by [anti-corruption activist] Anna Hazare at Bandra-Kurla Complex in December 2011. It had Kasab’s face on animals peeing on Constitution, the lions of the Ashoka emblem were replaced by wolves and Parliament was shown as a commode. As a responsible citizen, I felt duty bound to complain to the police against Trivedi for exhibiting such insulting cartoons,” the third-year law student from DY Patil College, Nerul, said on Monday.
“Anna and his team should have stopped the exhibition.” Katarnaware said the charges of sedition have been rightly applied as the cartoons are an insult to Constitution.
Comics A.M. | Todd McFarlane Productions emerges from bankruptcy
Todd McFarlane
Legal | Todd McFarlane Productions has emerged from bankruptcy after more than seven years, having paid more than $2.2 million to creditors, according to court documents dug up by Daniel Best. Of that, $1.1 million was part of McFarlane’s settlement with Neil Gaiman, which brought to a close the decade-long legal battle over the rights to Medieval Spawn, the heavenly warrior Angela and other characters (it’s unknown how much of that disbursement was eaten up by legal fees and how much actually went to Gaiman; the writer has publicly stated he gives money won in the proceedings to charity). Todd McFarlane Productions filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December 2004 following the $15 million court award to former NHL player Tony Twist, who sued over the use of his name in Spawn for the mob enforcer Antonio “Tony Twist” Twistelli. McFarlane and Twist settled in 2007 for $5 million. [20th Century Danny Boy]
Comics A.M. | St. Trinian’s cartoonist Ronald Searle passes away
Ronald Searle
Passings | British cartoonist Ronald Searle, best known as the creator of the fictional St. Trinian’s School, passed away Friday at a hospital near his home in southeastern France. He was 91. His spiky drawings of the wicked pupils of the girls school debuted in 1941 in Lilliput magazine, leading to five books and seven films. Searle, a Cambridge native, also co-authored (with Geoffrey Willans) the Molesworth book series. [Reuters]
Conventions | Four-day passes for New York Comic Con go on sale for $85 today at noon ET/9 a.m. PT. The event will be held Oct. 11-14 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City. [press release]
Conventions | Comiket, the world’s largest self-published comic book fair, drew a total of 500,000 people for its winter convention, held Thursday through Saturday at the Tokyo Big Sight in Japan. Held twice a year, in August and December, the event doesn’t use turnstiles or unique passes, so a visitor who attends all three days would be counted each time. [Anime News Network]
Liquid Comics launches Graphic India
Liquid Comics (formerly Virgin Comics) launched a new digital comics initiative last week called Graphic India. (Note: The site doesn’t work properly in Safari.)
Graphic India intends to be India’s premiere graphic novel platform and community, leveraging Liquid’s large library of high quality content created by Indian creators, while also aggressively commissioning and showcasing numerous original stories by India’s greatest new visionaries.
It’s a smart move, as India has a burgeoning comics market; Archie Comics recently set up an office there. The Graphic India website features an array of online comics, interviews, and feature articles, as well as a graphic novel competition designed to flush out new talent and, the Indian media site MediaNama speculates, rounding up a whole lot of intellectual property that can be leveraged in different directions:
According to a report from Livemint, all the writers of 20 specially commissioned graphic novels will be given contracts but the copyright for these novels will remain with Liquid Comics. We hence assume that the company will probably use the digital rights of these graphic novels to create additional revenue channels like digital movie rights, mobile rights and so on.
Indian creators who are contemplating signing those contracts would be well advised to Google “Tokyopop global manga” before continuing. Still, with titles like Mumbai Macguffin and Ramayan 3392AD, this site looks like it has some promise.