thor
SDCC Wishlist | IDW brings Anne Rice, Ashley Wood, Thor and more
Anne Rice Servant of the Bones
IDW Publishing has released a list of the items they’ll be selling at their booth at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, many of which are available for pre-order. The list includes advanced copies of Anne Rice’s Servant of the Bones #1, several Ashley Wood books, Walter Simonson’s The Mighty Thor: Artist’s Edition, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Baja ashcans, Locke & Key keys and much more. Check out the list below:
Anne Rice’s Servant of the Bones
• Visitors to Comic-Con can purchase an exclusive advance copy of Anne Rice’s Servant of the Bones #1 with a variant cover; only 400 copies of this exclusive issue will be available.
• Beginning in August, the first issue of Anne Rice’s Servant of the Bones will tell of the demon Azriel, who sets out to find the murderer of a beautiful young woman in the streets of New York City, only to discover a far more sinister plot that could end the world. Once a human in ancient Babylon, Azriel is a spirit of rage and terror that gradually rediscovers his humanity through holy vengeance and spiritual love.
• Anne Rice will be signing at the IDW booth #2643 on Thursday July 21, 2011 during Comic-Con. With the purchase of a SERVANT OF THE BONES #1, fans will be able to have one additional item signed.
• ANNE RICE’S SERVANT OF THE BONES #1 (Comic-Con Edition $5.00, 32 pages, full color) will be available at the IDW booth #2643 during Comic-Con, while supplies last.
• ANNE RICE’S SERVANT OF THE BONES #1 ($3.99, 32 pages, full color) will be available in comic stores in August 2011.
- July 9, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Why Marvel spoils stories in the media, Green Lantern lateness
Ultimate Spider-Man #160
Publishing | Arune Singh, Marvel’s director of communications, addresses how Marvel works with media outlets to break major storyline news and in many cases spoil the story, like Ultimate Spider-Man dying. Their goal is to hopefully bring lapsed or non-fans into stores: “When we line up this kind of mainstream media coverage, it’s offering the promise of breaking this big news to the outlet. It’s with the knowledge that they’ll be the ones making the headlines, being referenced by other sites and getting the attention. But if we wait till the story breaks or the Wednesday books go on-sale, someone else is going to buy the issue early in the morning and break the news. Is it possible that mainstream outlets will still pick up on the news then? Yes, it’s possible. But the only way to guarantee that big, sweeping placement worldwide — as you’ve seen with the Death of Spider-Man — is to break it before anyone has a chance. And that kind of placement is, as I mentioned above, what will get us attention from outside the industry.” [ComicsAlliance]
Retailing | Toronto retailer Chris Butcher worries about how well the two late Green Lantern movie prequel comics — one shipping this week, one shipping in August — will sell so long after the film’s release. He also discusses the lateness of the final issue of the War of the Green Lanterns crossover, which won’t come out until after the epilogue story in this week’s Green Lantern Emerald Warriors #11. [Comics212]
- June 29, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Revamped Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark performing well
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
Broadway | Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the retooled $75 million Broadway musical, took in $1.7 million for the week ending this past Sunday, which is above the $1.2 million the producers have indicated they need to reach to stay viable. The amount made it the No. 3 musical for the week, after Wicked and The Lion King. [Associated Press]
Legal | Robert Corn-Revere, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s general counsel, discusses the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. EMA, which sought to ban the sale of violent video games to minors. He notes that the court drew upon the history of comic book censorship in reaching its conclusion to reject the ban: “Citing the amicus brief filed by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, it noted the crusade against comics led by Dr. Frederic Wertham and observed that it was inconsistent with our constitutional traditions. The Court traced the history of censorship that targeted various media directed toward the young and held that restricting depictions of violence could not be justified under established principles of First Amendment law.” [CBLDF]
- June 28, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Caanan Grall draws Muppet Thor
For his 24-Hour Comics Day challenge, Caanan Grall came up with a brilliant mashup: Muppet Thor, in which the Muppets discover the mighty hammer Mjolnir and the Thunder God himself makes a surprise appearance with Miss Piggy. Grall does a nice job drawing the Muppets, and the story has some clever twists.
If you can’t get enough of Muppet mash-ups, head over to our sister blog Comics Should Be Good for a few more.
- June 17, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Walt Simonson’s The Mighty Thor Artist’s Edition available for preorder
Walt Simonson's The Mighty Thor Artist's Edition
IDW Publishing announced this week that Walt Simonson’s The Mighty Thor Artist’s Edition is now available for pre-order from their site. And if you’re attending the San Diego Comic Con this year, not only can you elect to pick up your copy at the show, but you can also choose a limited edition version with the above variant cover.
“I wrote and drew The Mighty Thor for Marvel more 25 years ago now, at a time when it was the fate of old comics to be deployed to the back issue bins in comic shops and at conventions. No one had any expectations of reprints or trade collections. Now, it’s a new day,” said Simonson. “I’m pleased that IDW and Marvel have seen fit to go back and revisit this work as they have. I couldn’t be more delighted to know Thor, Beta Ray Bill, and all their friends turned out to have a much longer shelf-life than I would ever have imagined.”
Announced earlier this year at WonderCon, Walt Simonson’s The Mighty Thor Artist’s Edition collects seven issues of the creator’s run on the title — Thor #337-340, which saw the debut of Beta Ray Bill, as well as Thor #360-363, which featured Thor battling Hela and the death of the Executioner. Each page is shot from Simonson’s original art and was scanned in color to mimic as closely as possible the experience of viewing the actual original art—so you’ll be able to see white-out corrections and blue pencil notations.
You can order the regular edition here and the variant cover edition, which is only available if you can pick it up in San Diego, here. Both editions cost $100. Simonson and his wife, comics writer Louise Simonson, will be at the IDW booth at the show.
- June 10, 2011 @ 10:30 AM by JK Parkin
Kate Beaton’s Spider-Man (and every other superhero she’s drawn)
Previously: Wonder Woman I, Wonder Woman II, Wonder Woman III, Wolverine, Aquaman, Batman, Lois Lane, Kraven, Thor (with Nicholas Gurewitch), Rogue page 1/Rogue page 2
Did I miss any?
- June 2, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
You know, for a moving graphic image … he’s pretty cut
I don’t have a lot of commentary about this Thor piece by Carlos Lerms except to say that this is why animated GIFs were created.
- May 24, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Michael May
Comics A.M. | Comic sales slide slows; Thor press kit triggers bomb scare
Fear Itself #1
Publishing | The drop in year-over-year sales in the direct market slowed in April, with periodicals slipping 1.75 percent and graphic novels just .84 percent. Overall sales were down 1.46 percent for April and 6.5 percent for the first four months of the year. Marvel topped Diamond’s comics chart with Fear Itself #1, while DC led the graphic novel category with the 15th volume of Fables. [ICv2.com]
Crime | Police evacuated the bus terminal in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan, Friday afternoon after a suspicious package was discovered across the street. The Michigan State Police bomb squad was called in, and it was determined the mysterious package was merely a briefcase-shaped media kit promoting Acura’s involvement with Marvel’s Thor. A writer for Automobile, whose offices are next to the terminal, had discarded the “S.H.I.E.L.D. Assessment Test” kit in the recycling bin, but it wasn’t picked up — apparently because it isn’t recyclable. [WXYZ, Jalopnik]
- May 16, 2011 @ 07:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
What Are You Reading?
The Essential Doctor Strange Vol. 3
Welcome once again to What Are You Reading? Today our special guest is John Jackson Miller, writer of Star Wars: Knight Errant and Mass Effect comics for Dark Horse and various Star Wars prose novels. He’s also the curator of The Comics Chronicles research website. His next comics series, Star Wars: Knight Errant, Deluge, starts in August.
To see what John and the Robot 6 crew are reading, click below.
- May 15, 2011 @ 01:17 PM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Batman busted; Go! Comi web domain used in scam
Mark Wayne Williams is ... Batman
Crime | Police in Petoskey, Michigan, arrested a 31-year-old man early Wednesday morning after he allegedly climbed to the roof of a downtown hardware store dressed as Batman. Mark Wayne Williams of Harbor Springs — yes, his middle name is Wayne — has been charged with trespassing, disturbing the peace and possession of dangerous weapons, as he reportedly carried a folding steel baton, weighted (sand-filled) gloves, and a can of chemical irritant spray.
Williams said at his arraignment that he didn’t realize the items were illegal, but didn’t offer an explanation as to why he was hanging off the roof of Meyer Ace Hardware dressed as the Dark Knight. The incident apparently isn’t Williams’ first encounter with police: The city’s public safety director said he had previously dressed as the Crow, but didn’t give any further details. [Petoskey News]
Crime | The expired website domain of defunct manga publisher Go! Comi is being used in a scam by an unknown party to solicit donations under the guise of resurrecting the company. “It is not real,” Audry Taylor, Go! Comi’s former creative director, warned last night on Twitter. “Do not donate. Gonna my lawyers on them.” [Anime News Network]
- May 12, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Kevin Melrose
Why Thor the movie is better than Thor the comic
Updated: Though many of the comments about this article (below and elsewhere) indicate that people read the entire thing and understood my point, enough didn’t that I now realize that the tile of this post is unintentionally misleading. This is not a post about how the story presented in the movie is better than the best stories presented in the comics. It’s about how Marvel’s trade program is impenetrable enough and how the quality of stories over a series’ 50-year history varies enough that people who enjoy Marvel movies and would enjoy reading some similar comics often end up just throwing their hands in the air and deciding to watch the movie again instead. Sincere apologies to those for whom this was not clear.
In his response to the news that Marvel’s putting a lot of their cartoons on Netflix, Tom Spurgeon noted that “the Marvel cartoons are probably a bigger factor than we realize in building a core audience for many of their properties, but I haven’t seen anyone seriously engage that subject since the first X-Men movie came out.”
I don’t expect that this article constitutes “serious engagement,” but Spurgeon did remind me of my own reaction to last weekend’s Thor movie. My dominant thought as I watched it (and one that lingered into the parking lot and beyond) was that I enjoyed it more than I’ve enjoyed a Thor comic in a long, long time. Since I was a kid really. The same is true of the Iron Man films – even the second one – only replace “in a long, long time” with “ever.”
Take into consideration that I’ve yet to read Walt Simonson’s Thor or any of Matt Fraction’s stuff with either character, so I realize that my viewpoint is extremely limited. But that’s not the point. I’m not trying to claim that the story presented in Kenneth Branagh’s Thor is objectively better than every comic ever written about the same character. I do suspect however that the experience of watching it is – for most people – a more satisfying thing than the experience of trying to read the books on which it’s based. As a life-long comics fan, my surprise is that I’m not only sympathetic to that perspective, but have adopted it myself.
- May 11, 2011 @ 03:10 PM by Michael May
The Fifth Color | Raise a hammer to Thor
Okay, we’re going to try a little something different today. When I left the house to go to the midnight showing of Thor Thursday night, I could barely believe I was really going to a movie theater that was going to show me a million dollar movie by Kenneth Branaugh about a guy who hits things with a hammer. Thor isn’t a character so well known to the public, and I have heard from a few people that not only did they not know who he was, but disliked him as part of the Avengers when they were younger, or had read comics in some mysterious era where Thor was not awesome. Still, despite mild obscurity as a comic character, here was his feature film. Imagine what you felt like the night before you saw Iron Man back in 2008 and you get an idea of the butterflies in my stomach: the very thought that someone aside from the Big Names of comic book culture could get a full feature film with quality actors and effects…. well, it was something to marvel over.
And despite knowing this day was coming — seeing screen shots, clips, trailers, merchandise for days, an interactive SHIELD website that told me about Acuras — some part of me still stood in awe of a real live Thor movie. I knew that, barring tremendous incident, I was going to like this movie. That I would leave the theater in that “It’s 2am and I have seen the best movie ever!” afterglow and I would also sit down and write the most unobjective review of my lifetime. So I sat right down and wrote myself some questions, things that I wondered about before going to see the movie that I would later be able to answer in that post-Thorgasmic haze of midnight showings, fan audiences and Shakespearean delivery.
Below are my past self’s questions to my future self written for The Fifth Color in the present. I wasn’t worried about whether the movie was going to be “good” (it is) or if I would like it (I did) or if it would change my life forever (probably need to see it in 3D). I didn’t want spoilers, so I didn’t ask about the particulars of the movie’s plot. I just wanted to know what the future was going to look like.
SPOILERS for the Thor movie after the jump!
- May 9, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Carla Hoffman
Comics A.M. | Gaiman fee feud continues; Carlos Trillo passes away
Neil Gaiman
Politics | The controversy in Minnesota continues over Neil Gaiman’s speaking fee, with a state House Republican committee chairman now recommending a $45,000 cut to the Twin Cites’ regional library system budget to make up for the Legacy Fund money paid to the author and comics writer in May 2010. “I simply subtracted out $45,000 — just making a point,” Rep. Dean Urdahl said. Gaiman responded that the move “seems like a sad way to make a point.” He talks at length with CityPages about the controversy. [Star-Tribune]
Passings | Prolific Argentine comics writer Carlos Trillo, co-creator of CyberSix, passed away over the weekend while on vacation in London. He was 68. Trillo, whose career spanned five decades, collaborated with such artists as Eduardo Risso, Jordi Bernet, Juan Bobillo, Carlos Meglia and Domingo Roberto Mandrafina. [TN.com, via The Beat]
Retailing | Peter Panepinto turns a Free Comic Book Day preview into one of those perennial articles about the potential effects of superhero movies on comic-book sales. [Carroll County Times]
- May 9, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Kevin Melrose
Alamo Drafthouse/Mondo has Thor seeing red
Thor by Ken Taylor
You might have heard there’s a new Thor film coming out this week, and as they’ve done in the past with Scott Pilgrim and Iron Man 2, the Alamo Drafthouse has created a limited edition Thor poster available through their Mondo Tees site.
The poster is limited to 380 copies and was created by artist Ken Taylor.
- May 5, 2011 @ 02:45 PM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Free Comic Book Day; how Rise of Arsenal won PRISM Award
Free Comic Book Day: Captain America-Thor
Retailing | Following a week in which much of the comics coverage was fixated on Action Comics #900 and Superman’s apparent renunciation of his U.S. citizenship, mainstream media outlets are now shifting their four-color focus to the 10th annual Free Comic Book Day, which will be held Saturday at more than 2,000 stores worldwide. You can see a list of notable creator appearances at the FCBD website, but here’s a rundown of some event previews: FCBD press release, Wired’s GeekDad blog, Los Angeles Times’ Hero Complex blog, Phoenix New Times, The Marietta (Ohio) Times, The Coast (Halifax, Nova Scotia), The Daily Athanaeum (West Virginia University) and TribLocal (Evanston, Ill.). [Free Comic Book Day]
Awards | Rich Johnston asks a PRISM executive how DC Comics’ widely reviled miniseries Justice League: The Rise of Arsenal rated the group’s award honoring “the accurate depiction of substance abuse and mental illness.” “Obviously our criteria is a bit different from that of reviewers,” said Larry Deutchman, PRISM’s executive vice president of marketing and industry relations. [Bleeding Cool]
- May 4, 2011 @ 07:00 AM by Kevin Melrose