Julia Wertz
Comics A.M. | Warner Bros. Entertainment names new CEO
Kevin Tsujihara
Business | In a surprise announcement, Kevin Tsujihara was announced Monday to succeed Barry Meyer as CEO of Warner Bros. Entertainment, the parent company of DC Entertainment. The 48-year-old Tsujihara, who has been with Warner Bros. since 1994, was named in 2005 as president of the Home Entertainment Group, overseeing the company’s home video, digital distribution, video games, anti-piracy and emerging technology operations. He was chosen as CEO over Bruce Rosenbaum, president of Warner Bros. Television, and Jeff Robinov, president of Warner Bros. Pictures (under which DC Entertainment is placed in the corporate structure). [The Hollywood Reporter]
Comics A.M. | Phoenix accused of axing comic to please advertiser
From the Karl Stevens comic in question
Comics | The editor-in-chief of the Boston Phoenix denies accusations that the alternative weekly canceled Karl Stevens‘ satirical comic Failure because advertiser Anheuser-Busch was offended by last week’s strip, which referred to Bud Light as “diluted horse piss.” Stevens, whose comic has appeared on ThePhoenix.com since 2009, claims he was told by the art director that Failure was being canceled specifically because of the Bud Light jab. “Apparently I offended Bud Light, and cannot be trusted,” Steven told Publishers Weekly. However, Editor-in-Chief Carly Carioli called the accusation “categorically false,” insisting Failure was canceled because it no longer fit The Phoenix, which has changed from a weekly newspaper to a weekly magazine. “It is categorically false that Karl’s strip was discontinued due to any outside objections. As the Phoenix’s editor in chief, it was my sole decision to discontinue Failure,” Carioli told The Boston Globe. “There were no sponsor objections — zero — to this strip or any other that I’m aware of.” [Publishers Weekly, The Boston Globe]
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. | CBLDF goes to bat for SideScrollers in Connecticut
SideScrollers
Graphic novels | The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has written to the Enfield, Connecticut, school district to ask that Matthew Loux’s SideScrollers be reinstated to its summer reading list and to point out that the district did not follow its own procedures when it removed the book last month after the mother of a ninth-grader complained about the graphic novel’s profanity and sexual references. [CBLDF]
Digital comics | Digital distributor iVerse has unveiled a new deal to sell foreign-language translations of Marvel and Archie comics worldwide. iVerse will have exclusive global rights to Marvel’s foreign-language comics, both floppies and trades, while for Archie they will create apps in different languages for different countries, starting with Japan, China, and India. iVerse CEO Michael Murphy says that 50 percent to 65 percent of the company’s digital sales are to international customers (including Canada). Nonetheless, the comics will be “platform-independent”: iVerse will provide translation (through a combination of machine translation and human editors) and distribution, so the comics will be available through their Comics + app but also through other channels, such as Amazon or iBooks. [Publishers Weekly]
The things people say to Julia Wertz!
Julia Wertz lays bare the indignities of the creative life in her latest comic “Things People Said to Me at Comics Conventions,” which chronicles, well, the thoughtless and occasionally hilarious things people say to her at cons. Other creators chime in with their own stories in comments.
For the record, I met Julia at MoCCA last year and had a brief, pleasant conversation with her. The thing I remember was that, unlike most creators, she is much better looking in person than her caricature of herself, and she didn’t seem the least bit grumpy, either. But maybe she was just having a good day.
Whether because she’s a glutton for punishment or she’s looking for new material, Wertz will be at CAKE in Chicago June 16-17.
(via The Beat)
Comics A.M. | Direct market experiences best January since 2008
Justice League #5
Sales | Sales of comic books and graphic novels to comic books stores through Diamond Comic Distributors increased 27.5 percent in January compared to the same month in 2011. Comics were up 32 percent while graphic novels were up 18 percent compared to 2011. DC Comics dominated all 10 spots at the top of the chart, with Justice League #5 coming in at No. 1. Batman: Through the Looking Glass was the top graphic novel for the month. [ICv2]
Passings | British comics artist Mike White, who illustrated Alan Moore’s The Twisted Man and numerous other stories for 2000AD, Lion, Valiant, Action and Score ‘n’ Roar, has passed away after a long illness. [Blimey!]
Publishing | Because the world demanded it, apparently, Random House plans to publish e-books of all the collected editions of Garfield newspaper comics. [Down the Tubes]
Koyama’s covers: an exclusive preview of Koyama Press’ 2012 titles
Most people would settle for being a death-defying stock-market genius and leave it at that, but noooooo, not Annie Koyama. She had to go and form Koyama Press, creating a home for acclaimed cartoonists like Michael DeForge and Dustin Harbin, and racking up Joe Shuster Awards for Outstanding Comic Book Publisher and, via the comics duo Tin Can Forest, Outstanding Comic Book Cartoonist. Not one to rest on her laurels, Koyama has provided Robot 6 with an exclusive look at her very strong-seeming 2012 line-up. It features new books from Tin Can Forest, DeForge, and Harbin–including the children’s comic The Playground War, whose cover you’re getting a peek at above–as well as the Koyama Press debuts of Jesse Jacobs (Even the Giants) and Julia Wertz (The Fart Party).
The full press release and the covers for the new Jesse Jacobs and Tin Can Forest books are after the jump.
This weekend, it’s SPX
SPX, or the Small Press Expo, returns to the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Bethesda, Md. this weekend.
The show’s special guests include Roz Chast, Jim Woodring, Diane Noomin, Jim Rugg, Ann Telnaes, Chester Brown, Johnny Ryan, Craig Thompson and Matthew Thurber, and fans who attend will also have the opportunity to meet and/or hear from Kevin Huizenga, Anders Nilsen, Jessica Abel, Sarah Glidden, Alex Robinson, Brian Ralph, Mike Dawson, Meredith Gran, Roger Langridge and Julia Wertz, just to name a few. I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out that our own Chris Mautner will be attending and conducting a Q&A with Johnny Ryan on Saturday, so be sure to tell him hi for us.
In addition to a lot of great talent, SPX also offers a full schedule of programming and the yearly Ignatz Awards. And a whole lot of new books and cool things will be available at the show:
Julia Wertz revisits her childhood home
Drinking at the Movies creator Julia Wertz is working on a new project, and she has put some pages up at her site. It’s about the house she grew up in:
I grew up in a crazy old house build in the late 1800′s in Northern California that my parents bought for mere pennies before living out in the boonies was seen as a desired location. As a kid (and now) I was obsessed with all the weird idiosyncrasies of the house. It was a bit Winchester Mystery House combined with your grandpa’s attic and an old barn, the perfect real estate trifecta.
Her detailed drawing style lends itself perfectly to the subject matter, and she includes some photos of the actual house as well. I’m not really sure where this is going, but so far it’s really cool.
MoCCA in words and pictures
This is why I came to MoCCA!
With a cheerful crowd, a pleasant venue, and plenty of exciting creators and books, this year’s MoCCA seems to have been deemed a success. Both Christopher Mautner and I were there, and we decided that rather than write two separate blog posts, we would have a dialogue in which we contrast our impressions of the show. If you’re looking for a more comprehensive report on the show, check out the MoCCA report by our CBR colleague Alex Dueben as well as Tim Callahan’s writeup of his visit.
Chris: I’ll start: Was this your first time at a small-press comics show? I know you’ve gone to NYCC and several manga/anime related shows before, but I didn’t know if you’d been to something like MoCCA before? What was your general impression?
Brigid: This was my first time at MoCCA and my first time at a small-press comicsshow like this, although I have been to art shows with a similar feel.
First of all, I loved the locale. I actually used to live a few blocks away, so it was a bit of a homecoming for me to walk through Madison Square Park in the sunshine. The building itself had a nice, open, loft-like feel with plenty of rough edges—it felt artsy.
The show itself seemed like a giant, really good, Artists Alley. (I kept getting this feeling of deja vu because there were so many people I had just seen at C2E2.) The show definitely felt crowded, but never overwhelming. I made a pretty good circuit of the floor, but I felt like I missed as much as I saw, and I could easily have spent twice as much time there as I did.
NY Mag features Pizza Island
Domitille Collardey at work
New York Magazine has a slideshow up this week about Pizza Island, the Greenpoint, Brooklyn, studio where six comics creators make the magic happen.
The slideshow includes self-portraits of Julia Wertz (Fart Party, Drinking at the Movies), Kate Beaton (Hark, A Vagrant) Lisa Hanawalt (I Want You), Sarah Glidden (How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less) Domitille Collardey (whose works are mostly in French), and Meredith Gran (Octopus Pie) as well as comments on each one by a co-worker. (It was Lisa and Domitille who commented on that Frank Quitely piece, so it’s interesting to contrast their self-portraits with his version of a woman cartoonist.)
There’s a whole lot of talent working in that small space, and if you’re fortunate enough to be going to MoCCA, be sure to check out their panel, which will feature all six. If you’re not, then head on over to the Pizza Island blog, where, at the moment, everyone is showing off their work spaces and discussing the quirks of their desktops.
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 …
The wisdom of Julia Wertz
It’s funny because it’s true: Julia Wertz provides a peek into the effects of reviews on a creator’s psyche at The Fart Party. Then to prove she’s not that thin-skinned, she posts some excerpts from bad reviews at her blog:
Only in America could an alcoholic, whiney, self-sabotaging person with limited artistic skill write and illustrate a comic, oops, “graphic novel” about her pathetic and boring life in San Francisco and New York City/Brooklyn and become successful. Reading it almost drove me to drink.
Ouch! Actually, Drinking at the Movies is anything but boring—it’s funny and perceptive and unsparing, and it’s well worth a read. I’m with the New York LA Times on this one.
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Wolverine #1, the top seller in September
Publishing | John Jackson Miller delves into September’s grim direct-market sales figures and discovers a (relative) bright spot: Sales of lower-tier titles — those that don’t crack Diamond’s Top 300 — appear to be increasing, to record levels. “How do we know?” Miller writes. “Believe it or not, a record for high sales was actually set in September. The 300th place comic book, Boom’s Farscape #11, sold more copies to retailers in September than in any month since November 1996: 4,702 copies. That’s a record for the period following Marvel’s return to Diamond. This bellwether tells us about the shape of the market, and how prolific the major and middle-tier publishers are; when many of their titles are being released and reordered, higher-volume titles tend to push farther into the list.”
However, the higher you go on the list, the worse things look: “The average comic book in the Top 25 is selling more poorly in 2010 than in 2003. At the very top of the chart, 2010′s average top-sellers are about 25% off what the best-sellers of 2003 were doing.” [The Comichron]
Big savings on Side A and Side B
In a story that is becoming depressingly familiar in the comics world, Rachel Dukes and Mike Lopez, the creative force behind Poseur Ink, are having a family emergency and need to sell off all their copies of their music-themed comics anthologies Side A and Side B.
Right now Side A, which includes work by Sean Azzopardi and Julia Wertz, is just five bucks, while Side B, with a cover by Lucy Knisley and comics by Knisley, Box Brown, Jeffrey Brown, Brandon Graham and Mitch Clem, among others, is $11.99. (Here’s a review, and Johanna Draper Carlson, who picked it up at MoCCA, said “So far, the best anthology I’ve seen all year.”)
Dukes says the books won’t be reprinted. Details on the liquidation sale are here.