Wildstorm
Talking Comics with Tim | Jeff Parker
Atlas 5
Any interview in which I can ask a question that prompts Jeff Parker to damn me is a good interview in my estimation (read on to find the “damn” moment, it’s a fun-loving damn). We initially conducted this interview before last week’s announced demise of Wildstorm, but I gave him a chance to adjust his response when discussing the likelihood of a second Mysterius miniseries. I’m sad to see Parker’s series Atlas come to an end this week with the release of Atlas 5. It’s not often that a writer gets to end a series on his own terms, and yet that’s what happened for Parker with Atlas. While the Atlas series takes its final lap, last week marked the start of Parker and artist Gabriel Hardman on the Hulk monthly (and I loved their first issue [25]). While this interview does not cover all of Parker’s Marvel work, we definitely work in a discussion of his Thunderbolts work.
Tim O’Shea: You ended the ATLAS series on your own terms. When you wrote the final scene of the last issue was it upsetting, or was it fine, as you realize you can always find ways to work aspects of these characters into future Marvel books?
Jeff Parker: No, I was actually pretty happy as I wrote it, because I felt this was one of the most “Atlasy” of all the stories. It did its own thing and was exciting and defied expectations, which is what that book should do. I can probably have them pop up in other things, but I really prefer them in their own corner of the Marvel Universe.
- September 27, 2010 @ 03:30 PM by Tim O'Shea
Six by 6 | Six awesome WildStorm titles
Sleeper #1
After 18 years, former Image studio and current DC Comics imprint WildStorm is shutting down this December. And as many have noted already, the house that Jim built has produced many awesome, memorable and even game-changing (to steal a phrase from Rob Liefeld) works in the last two decades.
Here are six of them that we found to be particularly awesome; let us know what we missed in the comments section.
1. Sleeper: There have been many comics that mash up superheroes with down-and-dirty genres like crime and espionage over the past decade; this may just be the best. The high concept is a gripping one: Super-spy Holden Carver is so deep undercover in an international super-criminal organization that when his one contact is placed in a coma, literally no one knows he’s secretly on the side of the angels. Carver’s predicament, the way he plays and gets played by both sides, his growing unwillingness or inability to draw the ethical lines needed to save his soul, if not his life–such is the stuff of a great crime drama. Superstar in the making Ed Brubaker brings all his talents and obsessions to the table here: his knack for crafting morally compromised characters while neither romanticizing their misdeeds nor softening them up, his recurring theme of how the secrets and sins of our pasts never truly leave us, his belief that damaged people seek out other damaged people to repair that damage, his eye for and ability to work with strong visual stylists. In this case that meant Sean Phillips, never better in his ability to believably root spectacular action and super-powers in a naturalist-noir milieu. All of this in a WildC.A.T.s spinoff, proving just how wild WildStorm was once willing to go.
Even its relatively short run redounds to its benefit: The complete story of Holden Carver is yours to own inexpensively, read easily, and ponder at your leisure. (Sean T. Collins)
- September 25, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
DC Entertainment plans to move or fire 80 employees amid restructuring
DC Entertainment
As many as 80 employees will be fired or relocated in the restructuring of DC Entertainment that will see part of the company’s operations move from New York City to Burbank, Calif., according to a notice filed Wednesday with the New York State Department of Labor and reported by Bloomberg.
That amounts to nearly a third of DC’s estimated 250 employees. The filing doesn’t specify how many of those positions will be firings, and how many will be moved cross-country. The Los Angeles Times reported earlier this week that about 20 percent of the company’s staff “will lose their jobs as part of the shift,” a statement challenged by DC.
A Warner Bros. spokesman wouldn’t comment to Bloomberg on the specifics of the layoffs.
Announced on Tuesday, the reorganization leaves DC’s comics-publishing division in New York City while relocating the company’s administrative and digital and multimedia operations — including, presumably, the WildStorm offices now based in La Jolla, Calif. — to a Warner Bros.-managed property in Burbank. It was subsequently revealed that the WildStorm and Zuda imprints will close as part of the shakeup.
The labor department filing states that layoffs will begin on Dec. 27, and continue through Aug. 27, 2011, presumably the date when the move is expected to be complete.
DC executives are in the process of meeting individually with staff members to discuss their positions. “… There’s a spectrum of things that are happening for various employees – there are promotions, there are offers of relocation and unfortunately there are some layoffs to come,” DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson told Comic Book Resources on Tuesday. “Until that’s all sorted and people have had time to consider their individual opportunities and we confirm all that, which will take us a few weeks, we aren’t going to be able to discuss specifics.”
- September 24, 2010 @ 08:02 AM by Kevin Melrose
Around the web: The end of WildStorm
Planetary #21
This week brings the end of an era, as DC Entertainment announced that the WildStorm imprint is shutting down in December. That, of course, has brought a lot of commentary and remembrances around the web.
- Both Newsarama and The Beat have round-ups of reactions from creators and former WildStorm employees. As Heidi notes in her intro, “…it isn’t just another in a long list of comics imprints that have ended over the years. It’s the end of a comics company that made history for 18 years as a vital part of several revolutions in commercial comics.” She received a comment from Rob Liefeld that really drives home how game-changing WildStorm was, noting how several prominent creators got their start under WildStorm, and how WildStorm published some of the biggest comics works of the past two decades.
- My favorite piece on WildStorm is probably Andy Khouri’s essay on ComicsAlliance, where he talks about the generation of comic fans who have grown up with WildStorm (and Fairchild’s breasts). “… the history of WildStorm tracks well with that of many turn-of-the-century babies like myself, whose unconditional affection for the comics medium (and, in some cases, employment in the comics industry) can be traced back to WildStorm founder Jim Lee’s pied piper act, where the most influential comic book artist of the 1990s lured a generation away from the safe, altruistic heroes of our childhoods and into much darker, much sexier and much more violent comic book worlds where we roamed free before he finally led us back to water,” he wrote.
- September 24, 2010 @ 05:00 AM by JK Parkin
Grumpy Old Fan | A different look at DC Comics’ solicitations for December 2010
Elijah Snow and Batman
Most months, this is that special week where I take a look at DC’s latest batch of solicitations. This month, though, the solicitations themselves take a back seat to the larger DC Entertainment news — and, specifically, to the end of the WildStorm imprint.
I know I am not the first to point out WildStorm’s slow death. For a while now it has been a disparate mix of superheroes, videogame tie-ins, and other licensed adaptations. As such, it’s been hard for WildStorm to establish (or re-establish) its own identity, even in terms of that diversity. Ironically, the imprint built much of its reputation on creator-driven titles, like The Authority and Gen13, which have now been incorporated into the greater DC Multiverse. They may have new life down the road, but if DC’s treatment of the Milestone and Red Circle characters is any indication, the quality of that life may well leave something to be desired.
Of course, many of WildStorm’s books will continue under the DC bullet, presumably to build up the DC brand in general. On one level I’m happy to see this kind of assimilation, because it instantly — albeit superficially — makes the DC line more diverse. I’ve argued for a while that it needs to be more than superheroes; but even The Authority and Astro City are sufficiently different from the DCU titles.
I have my doubts about that diversity creating new superhero readers, though. Longtime readers may remember that I got back into comic books through DC’s Star Trek. I started reading the Trek comic in the fall of 1984, just before Crisis On Infinite Earths came out, so the timing was good, to say the least. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t count on today’s readers making a similar transition from, say, Gears Of War to Freedom Fighters. If it’s not happening now, it probably won’t happen under a new masthead.
- September 23, 2010 @ 03:00 PM by Tom Bondurant
Artists pay homage to Wildstorm characters
Becky Cloonan draws The Grifter
The members of the Deep6 and Hypothetical Island studios have taken to doing a warm-up sketch on a given topic every morning and posting their sketches here. Yesterday, the group decided to pay homage to Wildstorm after the announcement of its demise by sketching a favorite character. Above is Becky Cloonan’s drawing of The Grifter; other contributions include Joe Infurnari’s Tom Strong, Simon Fraser’s Jenny Sparks, George O’Connor’s Planetary trio, Reilly Brown’s Fairchild, and Tim Hamilton’s Ex Machina drawing.
- September 23, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Piracy
Legal | A bill introduced this week in the U.S. Senate would allow the Justice Department to seek court orders against piracy websites located anywhere in the world. The bipartisan legislation, called the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, would permit the government to seek an injunction ordering a U.S. domain registrar or registry to stop resolving an infringing site’s domain names. That means a visitor attempting to access a targeted piracy site would instead get an error message. Domains outside of U.S. control could be blocked by Internet service providers upon a court order. [Threat Level, ICv2.com]
Business | Time Warner has extended the contract of Warner Bros. Chairman and CEO Barry Meyer through December 2013 as part of a management restructuring that sees WB President and COO Alan Horn shifting from his current position into a consultancy role in six months. And in a move that may look vaguely familiar to watchers of DC Entertainment, Warner Bros. executives Jeff Robinov, Bruce Rosenblum and Kevin Tsujihara will share as part of a new Office of the President that will report directly to Meyer beginning in April. DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson reports to Robinov, currently president of Warner Bros. Picture Group; it’s unknown whether that will change in the new structure. [The Hollywood Reporter]
- September 23, 2010 @ 08:23 AM by Kevin Melrose
The latest DC Entertainment shakeups: What we know
DC Comics
DC Entertainment’s twin announcements on Tuesday — the division of operations between Burbank and New York, and the end of the WildStorm and Zuda imprints — was followed by a round of interviews that provides us with a fairly good picture of what the moves mean. Here’s what we know:
DC Entertainment’s “bi-coastal realignment strategy”: Despite the silly corporate-speak, this aspect of the DC announcements is, at least on the surface, the simplest to break down. The company’s operations related to business/administration, as well as multimedia and digital content, will relocate to “a Warner Bros.-managed property” in Burbank, Calif., while the publishing division will remain in New York City. The move is expected to be complete by the end of next year.
From there, however, the details get a little murky. Although the initial press release specifically mentions “consumer products” will be part of the move, neither DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson nor DC Comics Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee would say whether that was a reference to DC Direct, DC Comics’ collectibles division.
- September 22, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Quote of the day II | A WildStorm hits Kurt Busiek
“Hoping for the best for friends at Wildstorm, and the business side of DC…All I know about this, I’ve learned from Twitter. I assume I’ll find out more when the guys at Wildstorm have dealt with whatever eruptions this is causing for them.
“To all who’ve been asking: They haven’t said anything yet about creator-owned Wildstorm books. Presumably they want to talk to us first. And right now, they’re busy absorbing what this means for them. So I doubt I’ll know anything for a day or two.”
–Astro City writer Kurt Busiek, whose guess as to how the move of much of DC’s business end to Burbank and the closure of WildStorm will impact his colleagues — not to mention on his long-running creator-owned title, heretofore published through that imprint — is apparently as good as ours.
- September 21, 2010 @ 01:30 PM by Sean T. Collins
DC Entertainment moving to L.A.; DC Comics staying in NYC; WildStorm and Zuda shutting down
Ending a year of industry speculation and acute employee anxiety, DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson announced today that the company’s multimedia business operations — including feature films, television, digital media, video games and consumer products — and its administrative wing will be relocating to Burbank, California, home of parent company Warner Bros. Entertainment. DC Comics, DC Entertainment’s publishing division, will remain in New York City.
Meanwhile, in a separate post on DC’s Source blog, DC Comics Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee announced the company will cease to publish comics under the WildStorm banner as of December. The imprint’s WildStorm Universe titles will end (though its characters are promised to return), its licensed and kids’ titles will instead be released as part of DC proper, and its editorial team will be restructured and folded into the Burbank-based DC Comics Digital wing. Finally, the struggling Zuda imprint, which already saw its foundational website shuttered in July, will cease to exist after this week, its future titles to be released under the DC banner.
Stay tuned to Comic Book Resources and Robot 6 for much more on these developments.
- September 21, 2010 @ 12:45 PM by Sean T. Collins
Fringe alternate covers surface on variant Fringe comic
Hey, remember those “alternate reality” comic covers that appeared on an episode of Fringe last season? They were designed by the artists at WildStorm for an episode that was set on a parallel earth where things were a bit “off” … like Oliver Queen and Hal Jordan wearing red instead of green, Jonah Hex replacing Guy Gardner in Justice League International, and other fun twists like that.
Well, in a weird bit of symmetry, it turns out that one of those covers will appear on an actual comic from WildStorm:
Above is the variant cover for issue #2 of Tales from the Fringe, a spin-off from the TV show. The cover probably looks slightly familiar to anyone who bought the “Death of Superman” books back in the 1990s. Also, I hear if you hold up that cover in front of the TV while watching the episode of Fringe where it appeared, you’ll destroy the space time continuum. So proceed with caution.
- August 18, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
Isotope Comics deconstructs the Ex Machina creative process
Back in 2004, James Sime of the San Francisco-based comic shop Isotope Comics teamed up with Ex Machina’s Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris for a voter registration drive where they gave away free copies of the comic and, of course, encouraged people to register to vote for that year’s election. They followed that up with an Election Day party in November, where they gave away an Ex Machina “virtual Criterion Collection styled DVD extras disc, autographed by the creators and jam-packed full of goodness,” Sime said.
Teaming up with Darren and Michelle Murata, co-founders of San Francisco’s celebrated Technology Think Tank & Digital Design Bureau ComradeAgency.com we made something truly beautiful. Packed with pages upon pages of Brian’s never before seen scripts and Tony’s production artwork from start to finish, thisDeconstructing the Machine disc took viewers on a personal tour behind the wizard’s curtain in a way nothing else ever had before. And we gave them away for free to each and every person who attended our event. And also to 100 lucky fans across the nation.
With Ex Machina‘s last issue hitting stores today, Sime has taken the contents of the DVD and put them on his website. It includes interviews with the creators, behind-the-scenes tours of Jolly Rogers Studios, production artwork and lots more. Check out the site here.
- August 18, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by JK Parkin
Food or Comics? | This week’s comics on a budget
The Light #5
Welcome once again to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy based on certain spending limits — $15, $30 to spend and if we had extra money to spend on what we call the “Splurge” item.
Join Brigid Alverson, Chris Mautner and me as we run down what we’d buy this week, and check out Diamond’s release list to play along in our comments section.
Brigid Alverson
If I had $15 …
I would get the last issue of The Light ($2.99). I read the first two issues and was very impressed by the art and the characters; I need to catch up on this story and bring it to a close. I definitely want to get issue 2 of CBGB ($3.99), the comic that takes you behind the scenes at the world’s greatest nightclub, and issue 3 of Sixth Gun ($3.99), which promises to reveal some secrets and push the plot along. I’ll round it out with Donald Duck and Friends #357 ($2.99), and Dark Horse’s Usagi Yojimbo ($1), which is an introduction to a series I have long been curious about but never read.
- August 17, 2010 @ 03:11 PM by JK Parkin
What Are You Reading?
X'ed Out
As the final days of summer start to waste away and you’re looking for something to enjoy before hitting the books for school, there’s no better place to find some good stuff to read than right here in our weekly What Are You Reading? column.This week our guest is journalist/blogger Heidi MacDonald, of The Beat and Publishers Weekly fame.
To see what Heidi and the rest of the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below …
- August 15, 2010 @ 02:44 PM by JK Parkin
What are you reading?
Adam Strange Archives Vol. 1
Welcome to another round of What Are You Reading. With JK Parkin in the midst of San Diego Comic-Con madness, I’m taking over the WAYR duties for this week. Our guest this week is blogger, noteworthy critic and Newsarama contributor Matt Seneca.
Find out what Matt’s been reading (he’s got a long list), and be sure to include your own current reading list, after the jump …
- July 25, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Chris Mautner