Comic Book Resources

D23 | Day one's big movie panel

My wife and I flew down to Anaheim, Calif. last night to attend Disney's first-ever D23 Expo, a fan convention focused on anything related to the House of Mouse. The event kicked off on Thursday with a presentation by Bob Iger, Disney CEO, which we unfortunately missed, but you can read about what he said about the Marvel deal over on CBR.

We picked up our badges -- or, actually, wristbands -- last night, and headed over to the Anaheim Convention Center this morning for our first full day.

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Straight for the art: Muppets Rawk

Muppets Rawk!

This has been making the rounds lately: A mash-up by Marc Palm of the Muppets and Robert Crumb's famous Cheap Thrills record cover. Be sure to click on the link to see all the notes and YouTube links to the songs referenced.

BOOM! launches kid-friendly website to market Disney books

The Muppet Show

Today sees the release of two of BOOM's kid-friendly titles coming out of their deal with Disney/Pixar -- The Incredibles: Family Matters #1 and The Muppet Show Comic Book #1. To help market the books to kids -- and to help save the children from their more adult-oriented titles -- BOOM! has launched a new website geared specifically to the younger set and their parents. Boom-kids.com features info on both titles, as well as their upcoming Cars comic. They're also offering subscriptions to all of these titles on the site.

"We love the sophisticated stories of the core BOOM! comics; it's what we built the company on," said BOOM! CEO Ross Richie in a press release. "But in the mass market and the direct market, where these books will be seen by children, the branding needs to align with other kids' content that we publish, from CARS to TOY STORY to MUPPETS to other BOOM! original works that we plan to release. The BOOM! Kids imprint allows us to help parents, keeping our message straightforward and branding the kids' stuff clearly, and signaling the older-skewing material as appropriate for those audiences."

So if you're looking for something to buy your kids, check out the new site, but if you're looking for less wholesome titles about zombies, shadowy government thinktanks and irredeemable villains, the regular old BOOM! site can help you out.

BOOM! Studios' Chip Mosher on Hexed, Farscape and more

Chip Mosher at Disneyland

Yesterday Mark Waid, editor-in-chief of BOOM! Studios, announced via a YouTube video that BOOM! would post full issues of their Hexed mini-series on MySpace the same day the book was released in stores, just like they did with the North Wind mini-series a year ago. As I was already talking to Chip Mosher, their sales and marketing guy, about several other things going on with BOOM! when the video was released, I was able to sneak in a few questions about the promotion as well.

My thanks to Chip for his time.

JK: Last year BOOM! put the complete North Wind mini-series up on MySpace Comic Books, with each issue going up on the day it hit retailers' shelves. And now you're doing it again with HEXED. Why did you choose HEXED, versus any of your other titles?

Chip: Right time. Right place. Right book.

Personally, I see Hexed as one of the books that is kicking off BOOM! 3.0. I consider Mark coming on board as E-i-C as BOOM! 2.0 -- where he spearheaded the stabilizing of the line-up and built up editorial. I look at this next year as BOOM! 3.0 -- where the promise of Mark Waid as E-i-C is realized in full. The team here at BOOM! is running on all cylinders. You'll see a whole host of books coming out of BOOM! in the next year, shepherded by Mark and the editorial team, that will just rock your socks off.

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