Comic Book Resources

Your video of the day: In the studio with Mort Drucker

Here's a trailer for a new interview series with great cartoonists, with the famous Mad magazine artist talking shop. (via)

Your video of the day: The animated Don Martin

Somehow it just seems all the more horrifying once you add motion, doesn't it?  (via)

What Are You Reading?

Ninja

Welcome to What Are You Reading. Our guest this week is Sean T. Collins, who should be no stranger to most of you as he's been guestblogging with us all week while JK Parkin was on vacation.

To find out what Sean and the rest of us have been reading this week, just click on the link below ...

Continue Reading »

Thin wallets, fat bookshelves: A publishing news round-up

• Ladies and gentlemen, Dwayne McDuffie has an announcement:

The very first Milestone comic will finally be collected, 17 years after its original publication. HARDWARE: THE MAN IN THE MACHINE will reprint Hardware #1-8, featuring the character’s origin, and first adventure. The Direct Market (comic book store) release date hasn’t been announced yet, but it tends to be about a month earlier than in the general market.

• In other news, Archaia announced plans to start a new $9.95 hardcover line of books, where one graphic novel will be released each quarter at that low price. The plan kicks off in August with the release of The Engineer: Konstrukt.

• Fantagraphics co-publisher Kim Thompson says the Norewegian artist Jason's next project will be a repackaging of his previous books in the new Low Moon format. The first book, Almost Silent, will collect You Can't Get There From Here, The Living and the Dead, Tell Me Something and Meow Baby! The next book, What I Did, will tentatively collect The Iron Wagon, Shhhhh and Hey Wait. Thompson also adds that Jason is working on a new graphic novel, Werewolves of Montpellier, which will be out in summer of 2010.

Continue Reading »

Thin wallets, fat bookshelves: A publishing news round-up

Pelu vol. 1

* Warren Ellis hinted at two upcoming comics projects over on his blog: Captain Swing and the Electrical Pirates of Cindary Island, which will be published by Avatar Press with art by Raulo Caseres; and Supergod, about which little is revealed beyond the title.

* The Same Hat guys reveal that Last Gasp will be publishing a new manga by Junko Mizuno this fall, entitled Little Fluffy Gigolo PELU Vol. 1. Adults only kids.

* Johanna Draper Carlson drops the news that the 600th issue of Archie will have him marrying Veronica in one of those "what will the future hold" type dealies. Apparently it's part one of a six-part story.

* Speaking of big milestones, Evan Dorkin says the 500th issue of Mad Magazine is out on newsstands now, which is kind of amazing -- to me at any rate.

* Percy Gloom author Cathy Malkasian will publish her follow-up book, Temperance, through Fantagraphics this fall.

* AdHouse pulls back the curtain on Process Recess 3, the third book of art by James Jean.

* Want to know what the cover to that upcoming collection of John Stanley's Nancy stories looks like? Click here.

Food or Comics | MAD reactions, and more

MAD #46 (April 1959)

• MAD cartoonist Tom Richmond reacts to yesterday's news about cutbacks at the legendary humor magazine, which include layoffs, a move to quarterly release, and the elimination of MAD Kids and MAD Classics. "Obviously this is very sad news," Richmond writes on his blog. "I’m a little too busy right now to write much about it, but needess to say I’ll be having a lot more free time in the future for blogging."

• Cartoonist Evan Dorkin, who also contributes to MAD, wonders how the changes will affect free-lancers: "... I wasn't aware of how bad magazine distribution has become, and a venerable magazine like Mad, a comic but in some ways never thought of as a comic, well, seeing it take a gutshot like this shakes one up. Or at least me. There are people who live off their Mad income, we're not one of those, and I can see this affecting a lot of  freelancers who relied on 12 issues of material for their income."

• Mark Evanier, who wrote a book on the history of MAD, assures us that the cuts aren't the beginning of the end for the magazine: "MAD will not go away. It's too valuable a brand name to ever disappear. [...] Its new configuration is not a long-range plan ... and maybe that long-range plan, whenever they arrive at it, will restore MAD to its former glory in some venue."

• With The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press reducing home delivery to just three days a week beginning in March, some readers are wondering how they'll get their daily dose of funnies. It turns out the comics section will be included in the newspapers' e-edition, available to subscribers in digital or PDF formats.

• While some manga publishers have been laying off staff, or shutting down completely, VIZ Media has just added an RSS feed devoted to job openings.

• This exchange this morning on Twitter between Templar, Arizona, creator Spike and Anders Loves Maria creator Rene Engström seems to sum up the general sentiment of the past few weeks:

Spike: "Young American Comics going out of business, Diamond upping the benchmark, MAD Magazine going quarterly. Has there been any GOOD comic news?"

Engström: "Any good PRINT comic news you mean."

Food or Comics | DC Comics and Diamond make cuts

Bob Schreck

• As was noted on CBR's front page, Heidi MacDonald reports that DC Comics has laid off well-respected Senior Editor Bob Schreck, Subscriptions Manager Christine Sawicki, and several staff members at MAD magazine.

The layoffs are part of massive cutbacks by parent company Warner Bros. Entertainment that will result in the elimination of some 800 jobs worldwide. Until word of the layoffs trickled out today, it had been unclear whether DC Comics would be part of the belt-tightening.

Schreck is an industry veteran who worked at Comico and Dark Horse before co-founding Oni Press with Joe Nozemack in 1997. At DC, Schreck oversaw the Batman line, and later the successful All-Star books.

• According to Newsrama, DC Comics' MAD magazine will move to a quarterly schedule in April, and will cease publication of MAD Kids and MAD Classics.

• Heidi MacDonald also reports that Diamond Comic Distributors laid off 13 employees on Thursday, including the managing editor and designer for the recently canceled Diamond Dialog magazine. A wage reduction for management and staff also was announced.