Marvel
Roger Langridge just says no to more Marvel and DC work
Roger Langridge is the latest creator to say he is no longer going to work for Marvel or DC Comics because of concerns about the way they treat creators.
The subject came up last week, when Langridge, the writer of Thor: The Mighty Avenger, the Muppets comics (originally created for BOOM! Studios and now being republished by Marvel) and John Carter: A Princess of Mars, was interviewed on The Orbiting Pod podcast. After chatting about his newest comics Snarked! and Popeye (which IDW Publishing has just expanded from a four-issue miniseries to an ongoing series), he added this:
I’m very happy to be cultivating a working relationship with people like BOOM! and IDW at the moment when Marvel and DC are turning out to be quite problematic from an ethical point of view to continue working with.
…
I think it’s down to everybody’s individual conscience, but I think those of us who have options—and I do have options, I’ve got a working relationship with a couple of different publishers, I’ve got illustration to fall back on, I’m not beholden to Marvel and DC for my bread and butter, so it seems to me that if you do have the option you should maybe think hard about what you are doing and who you are doing it for. I was writing the last issue of John Carter when the news came that Marvel had won a lawsuit against the heirs of Jack Kirby, and Steve Bissette wrote a very impassioned post about the ethics of working for Marvel under those circumstances, and pretty much then I figured I should finish the script I was writing and move on, and it’s not like Marvel needs me. It’s no skin off their nose if I don’t accept anything else from them in the future.
On his blog, Langridge clarifies that he made the decision last summer, at a time when he wasn’t doing any Marvel or DC work, so he’s not so much quitting as deciding not to go back. His statements come less than a month after iZombie and Superman writer Chris Roberson made headlines with his announcement that he’s ending his relationship with DC because of its treatment of creators and their heirs.
- May 14, 2012 @ 08:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | Florida comic store raided, owner arrested
Spice
Crime | Michael Lewis, owner of Rocket Comics in Pensacola, Florida, is being held on a $11,000 bond after his store was raided by police for allegedly selling “Spice,” a synthetic form of cannabis. [WEAR ABC]
Publishing | The Economist’s Babbage blog takes a look at R. Stevens’ successful Kickstarter for his webcomic Diesel Sweeties, which raised $60,000, far overshooting his initial goal of $3,000. [The Economist]
Creators | Gary Groth previews his interview with renowned children’s author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, who passed away last week at age 83. The interview, conducted in October, is scheduled to appear in the next issue of The Comics Journal. [TCJ.com]
- May 14, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Chain Reactions | Avengers Assemble #3
Avengers Assemble #3
Spoiler’s Warning: This post contains potential spoilers for both the Avengers movie and Avengers Assemble #3.
Marvel followed the release of their big blockbuster Avengers movie with the third issue of Avengers Assemble by the team of Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Bagley, Danny Miki and Paul Mounts. The book features an Avengers team that mirrors the one from the film fighting a revamped version of their classic foes The Zodiac.
“I believe Tom [Brevoort] came to me and said it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a book out that had these characters in print. Because you’re involved in what’s going on in the creative committee, you’re probably the perfect guy to do it,” Bendis told CBR back in February. “[I thought] what we need is a book like this in continuity that matters, that’s really huge.”
The timing couldn’t have been better, as issue #3 reveals the big bad behind the Zodiac, which mirrors events in the Avengers film. But how is the comic itself? Here’s a round-up of reactions from various folks around the web:
- May 13, 2012 @ 08:42 AM by JK Parkin
Quote of the day | Stan Lee on character ownership, creator rights
“I’ve never been one of these people who worries about [that]. I should have been. I’d be wealthy now, if I had been. I always felt the publisher was the guy investing all his money, and I was working for the publisher, and whatever I did belonged to him. That was the way it was. And I was always treated well, I got a good salary. I was not a businessman. Now, a guy like Bob Kane, who did Batman — the minute he did Batman, he said, ‘I wanna own it,’ and signed a contract with DC. So he became reasonably wealthy. He was the only one who was smart enough to do that. [...] I haven’t had reason to think about it that much. I think, if somebody creates something, and it becomes highly successful, whoever is reaping the rewards should let the person [who] created it share in it, certainly. But so much of it is — it goes beyond creating. A lot of people put something together, and nobody really knows who created it, they’re just working on it, y’know? But little by little, the artists and the writers now are a different breed than they were, and most of them, if they create anything new, they insist that they be part owners of it. Because they know what happened to Siegel and Shuster, and to me, and to people like that. I don’t think it’s a problem anymore. They make much more money than they used to make, when I was there. Proportionately. Everybody thought that I was the only one that was getting paid off, but I never received any royalties from the characters. I made a good living, because I was the editor, the art director, and the head writer. So I got a nice salary. That was all I got. I was a salaried guy. But it was a good salary. And I was happy.”
– Stan Lee, in a wonderful profile at Grantland, responding to a question about character ownership
- May 11, 2012 @ 08:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Jonah Hex co-creator Tony DeZuniga passes away at age 79
Legendary comic artist Tony DeZuniga, co-creator of Jonah Hex and Black Orchid, passed away early Wednesday at Las Piñas Doctors Hospital in the Philippines after suffering from a stroke, heart failure and brain damage, GMA News reports. The 79-year-old artist was surrounded by wife Tina, his daughter Sheryl and his sisters-in-law.
“Tony is very smart, clever, and funny,” Tina DeZuniga told the website. “He is my knight in shining armor.”
DeZuniga was admitted to the intensive care unit in mid-April following a stroke, leading friends and fans to rally to help cover his medical expenses. On Free Comic Book Day, Filipino artists came together to sell sketches and T-shirts to raise money for the fund.
- May 11, 2012 @ 06:15 AM by Kevin Melrose
Avengers Vs. X-Men makes return visit to ABC’s Once Upon a Time
Call it coincidence, call it fairy-tale magic, call it corporate synergy, call it — all right, it’s definitely corporate synergy. But call it what you will, it’s bringing Marvel’s Avengers Vs. X-Men to the season finale of the ABC fantasy drama Once Upon a Time.
For those not in the know, the hit TV series centers on bails-bonds collector Emma Swan, who’s led to a town in Maine where fairy-tale characters have been sentenced by the Evil Queen’s curse to lead an ordinary existence with no memories of their extraordinary natures.
- May 10, 2012 @ 10:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Keep on Hulkin’, Jim Steranko
The Giant-Size Marvel blog found this awesome example of Jim Steranko channeling Robert Crumb by way of Friends of Ol’ Marvel (FOOM), the Marvel fan club from the ’70s. In case it’s too small to read, that’s a FOOM membership card in Hulk’s hand.
Now if someone would only uncover a lost John Buscema drawing of Mr. Natural as Odin.
- May 10, 2012 @ 09:00 AM by Michael May
Comics A.M. | Remembering Maurice Sendak; IDW’s digital sales
Where the Wild Things Are?
Passings | The Comics Journal collects tributes to Maurice Sendak, the legendary children’s book author and illustrator who passed away Tuesday at age 83. Philip Nel, director of Kansas State University’s Program in Children’s Literature, also writes an obituary for the influential creator of Where the Wild Things Are. [TCJ.com]
Publishing | In an interview with the retail news and analysis site ICv2, IDW Publishing President and CEO Ted Adams says that while digital sales are at 10 percent of print sales, both are going up: “There’s just no question at this point that selling comics digitally is definitively not impacting [print] comic book sales. If anything you could make the argument that the success of digital is driving more print comic book sales. The correlation at this point is that increased digital has resulted in increased print. Whether or not that is a direct correlation, I don’t know how you would figure that out. I can say with no uncertainty that our increased digital revenue has come at a time when we’ve had increased comic book sales.” [ICv2]
- May 10, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Introducing SpyGal, the first … pore-zapping action hero?
Marvel’s custom-publishing division has teamed with San Francisco-based Benefit Cosmetics to create SpyGal, billed as the “first-ever beauty-inspired comic book hero.” What does “beauty-inspired” mean? In this case, it’s that SpyGal, and her “wise-cracking, pore-zapping persona,” is based on Benefit’s POREfessional pore-minimizing primer.
Yeah, I don’t know what to do with that either, but it’s tough to pass up a SpyGal comic — “She’s smooth! She’s sexy! She’s your secret weapon against pores!” — by Phil Noto and James Asmus, available beginning this month at Benefit counters. Come on, it’s Phil Noto!
“SpyGal is a dynamic, nuanced hero for a new generation,” Marvel’s John Dokes said in a statement, “and combining that with the unparalleled storytelling of Marvel brings fans one of the most unique comics they’ll read all year.”
Check out the sneak peek, and full press release, below.
- May 9, 2012 @ 11:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | Iranian cartoonist sentenced to 25 lashes
The cartoon in question
Legal | Iranian cartoonist Mahmoud Shokraiyeh has been sentenced to 25 lashes for a cartoon he drew that depicted Arak Member of Parliament Ahmad Lotfi Ashtiani in a soccer jersey. [The Daily Cartoonist]
Publishing | In a wide-ranging interview, Dynamite CEO Nick Barrucci talks about the comics market, the demise of Borders, digital comics and the slump in book sales: “[T]here are more and more trade paperbacks and hard covers coming out, so there’s less chance of getting as much attention as you’re used to, and reorders are down because of it. As the number of trade paperbacks and graphic novels increases, the number of SKUs increases, the number of units sold per SKU is decreasing. There are very few exceptions to this. I remember looking at the Diamond chart from a month or two ago and the bestselling trade paperback that month was 7,000 units. It might even have been a Walking Dead trade paperback, and as much as two years ago the bestselling trade paperback sold 12-15,000 units.” [ICv2]
- May 9, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Food or Comics? | Higher Earl Grey
Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy at our local comic shop based on certain spending limits — $15 and $30 — as well as what we’d get if we had extra money or a gift card to spend on a splurge item.
Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList, and tell us what you’re getting in our comments field.
NonNonBa
Chris Mautner
If I had $15, I’d grab the latest Lio collection, Zombies Need Love Too. Cartoonist Mark Tatulli has one of the better newspaper comic strips going these days.
If I had $30, I’d nab what is clearly the book of the week, NonNonBa, the latest book from Shigeru Mizuki, author of Onward Toward Our Noble Deaths. NonNonBa aims more toward Mizuki’s traditional milieu of Japanese folklore and yokai monsters, though this book is more autobiographical in nature in that it deals with his relationship with his grandmother and how she instilled in him an interest in the spirit world. I’ve been anxiously awaiting this release.
My splurge for the week would likely be one of two books from First Second: Either Baby’s in Black, Arne Bellstorf’s fictionalized tale of the sadly doomed Beatle, Stuart Sutcliffe, or Mastering Comics, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden’s follow-up to their previous how-to textbook, Drawing Words, Writing Pictures.
- May 8, 2012 @ 01:34 PM by Michael May
Quote of the day | The Avengers, and the importance of superheroes
“Take the character of Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson. Like the character of Katniss in The Hunger Games, she has skills you might not expect from her if you mistook her for what her unlucky Russian interrogator did—just another pretty face. Black Widow, or Natasha Romanoff, is a more complicated character than Katniss, though. Possessed of numerous languages, secretive, a spy from childhood with a ‘very specific skillset,’ she’s not all good, though she’s working for good now—she has, as she says, “red on her ledger.” Flawed as she is, as they all are, that only serves to make her more empowering as a role model. You can imagine a young generation of girls watching this movie and thinking they want to be like her, now fighting for good, able to take down aliens and bad men and get bruised and bloody but never give up. As a woman, she’s outnumbered in her gender (the other badass woman in the group is S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill, who gets fewer lines but still manages to escape and outsmart certain death over and over again while looking beautiful, as does Natasha). Maybe they’re pretty girls, but they absolutely get their time to shine alongside and on equal footing with the guys in a non-sexualized way. While they do wear tight-fitting black clothes that reveal their femininity (this is a big-budget movie based on a comic book, after all, and the dudes are wearing some skintight stuff as well), they are not considered “less” either by the men or by each other—or even, gender-equally so, by the villains.”
– Jen Doll, writing for The Atlantic Wire on the blockbuster success
of Marvel’s The Avengers, and the importance of superheroes
- May 8, 2012 @ 11:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | The Avengers, comics and the evolution of storytelling
The Avengers #1
Comics | With the success of The Avengers film, Kendall Whitehouse discusses the narrative techniques comics have “explored and exploited,” including “multi-issue story arcs, crossovers, team-ups, reboots and multiple title tie-ins,” noting they not only help sell more comics but also have blazed the trail for complex stories: “The story has now become a world unto its own that allows the reader to explore whichever dimensions are of the greatest interest. Follow the events from the perspective of Iron Man or Thor. Or just peruse the core series and ignore the supplementary story elements. The series presents a nearly unbounded narrative universe for the reader to experience. It is easy to interpret this with a cynical eye as nothing more than a series of cheap marketing tactics designed to pump sales. And yet, when well executed, something larger emerges.” [Knowledge@Wharton Today]
Retailing | Saturday’s Free Comic Book Day also served as the grand opening for Aw Yeah Comics, a store in Skokie, Illinois, owned (as the name suggests) by Tiny Titans creators Art Baltazar and Franco Aureliani and retail veteran Marc Hammond. [Skokie Review, Time Out Chicago]
- May 8, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Free Comic Book Day: What to look out for
Today is Free Comic Book Day, and here’s a rundown of some of the comics that caught my interest. If you want to check ‘em out before you go, CBR has previews of many of the FCBD titles. (My FCBD comics came from my favorite Boston comics shop, Comicopia.)
Hands down, the one comic everybody wants is Archaia’s hardback anthology, which includes brand-new stories from six of their titles: Mouse Guard, Labyrinth, Return of the Dapper Men, Rust, Cursed Pirate Girl, and Cow Boy. The stories stand on their own but also tie in to the books in clever ways; the Mouse Guard story is a puppet show, and the Rust story features a boy writing a letter to his father (as his older brother does in the book). This book is a keeper; it even has a nameplate inside the front cover. Here’s a list of where Archaia creators will be doing book signings this FCBD.
BOOM! Studios has a nice flipbook with several Adventure Time comics on one side and Peanuts on the other. The Peanuts comics are mildly funny, but the Adventure Time side is edgier and features extra stories by Lucy Knisley and Michael DeForge. The stories are colorful and lively, and DeForge’s contribution, about a bacon ecosystem that supports tiny breakfast organisms, is downright surreal.
- May 5, 2012 @ 07:12 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | The Walking Dead continues bookstore domination
The Walking Dead, Compendium One
Publishing | Continuing its domination of the graphic novel sales in bookstores, The Walking Dead laid claim to seven of the Top 10 spots on BookScan’s April chart. The series, by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard, took the first four positions. What’s more, 12 of the Top 20 graphic novels were volumes of The Walking Dead. [ICv2.com]
Publishing | Robot 6 contributor Brigid Alverson talks to Right Stuf director of marketing and communications Alison Roberts about that company’s announcement earlier this week that it will be publishing the first three volumes Hetalia: Axis Powers as a print-on-demand books. The series was originally licensed by Tokyopop, which is co-branding the books with Right Stuf. [MTV Geek]
- May 4, 2012 @ 07:55 AM by Brigid Alverson