A new round of Pengiun Classics with covers by comics-types is on the way, apparently; the first to be revealed, Dan Clowes’ Frankenstein!

Link via Flog:

Ward Sutton writes to say he is wrapping up his SUTTEN IMPACT strip which ran in the Village Voice among other places.

In the last couple weeks I made a big decision: to retire my Sutton Impact comic strip. I began the strip 12 years ago and the Village Voice picked it up 9 years ago. My final strip is out today:

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0716,sutton,76368,9.html

I’d been thinking about this for some time and although it was a hard decision to make, once I made it I felt liberated, energized and excited.

Many factors led to the decision, not the least of which was the weekly deadline stress every Friday. Getting my Fridays back means 52 more work days a year to devote to new projects and branching out artistically in new directions.

After making the decision, both the Art Director and the Editor tried to sway me back and to change my mind, and that meant a lot. Many cartoonists have been fired/dropped from the Voice over the years and my exit really worked out in an ideal way. I hope to keep creating cartoons for the Voice, but not on any regular, weekly schedule.

CORRRECTION: Oops, we told you we were blotto — that was a 3-year-old poster. Info and graphics corrected.

We’ll be away during this weekend’s Alternative Press Expo so we won’t be able to make all our usual “going APE” Jokes and our coverage must be a bit perfunctory. The guest list is incredible from Art Spiegelman to Kevin Huizenga. Some company doings:

SLG/Slave Labor
Fantagraphics

There are lots and lots of parties, but to see them all you will have to go to the JUMP:

(more…)

Spider-Man 3 had its world premiere in Tokyo the other day — the first big American movie ever to debut outside the US.

“Spider-Man 3,” the latest and possibly last film in one of the world’s most successful movie franchises, premiered on Monday with thousands of screaming fans cheering stars Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst.

Launching the sequel in Japan, home to a huge community of superhero comic fans, rather than the United States, was seen as a shrewd push into the faster-growing international market that could help boost box-office revenues.

Over the next week and a half, the film will also have gala openings in London, Rome, Berlin, Madrid, Moscow, New York and Stockholm in a marketing plan aimed at seeing “Spider-Man 3″ do as well at the box office as its predecessors, which collectively grossed $1.6 billion (800 million pounds).

The LA Times has a long analysis of the film, which cost a mere $250 million:

“Spider-Man 3″ proves that Maguire can take a punch from a big fist made of sand. But the real risk is whether an American superhero with two hit movies earned by fighting off bad guys in the canyons of Manhattan, can remain a blockbuster draw in the international markets that are often more important to Hollywood’s bottom line.

“Who knows,” said Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer, when asked how long the Spider-Man franchise can be extended. “It’s so expensive.” Of course, “Spider-Man 3″ is more than a movie. It is also a video game, a soundtrack and a bunch of other marketing hooks.

Stringer ordered the movie to premiere in Tokyo ahead of its May 4 U.S. opening to underscore his determination to make the point in Japan that the company should be as celebrated for its movies, music and video games as for its screens and consoles.

“In the digital age, who knows what came first: the content or the hardware, the chicken or the egg,” said Springer to the Tokyo audience before the curtain rose.

Reviews are rolling in at AICN.

MEANWHILE, an even more interesting plotline is arising, regarding the rumor of Sam Raimi directing THE HOBBIT after Peter Jackson and New LIne parted ways. EW says it might just be true.

Raimi went on the record for the first time about his potential involvement in the project during an exclusive interview with EW’s Steve Daly for the magazine’s Summer Movie Preview issue, on newsstands Friday: ‘’Peter Jackson might be the best filmmaker on the planet right now. But, um, I don’t know what’s going to happen next for me right now. First and foremost, those are Peter Jackson and Bob Shaye’s films. If Peter didn’t want to do it, and Bob wanted me to do it — and they were both okay with me picking up the reins — that would be great. I love the book. It’s maybe a more kid-friendly story than the others.'’ (If Raimi were to take on a complex, intense project like The Hobbit — the rights to which New Line/MGM only has for a limited amount of time — it could force Columbia to either push back its production schedule for Spider-Man 4 or find a new director for the franchise.)

Spidey 4? Look, Sam…NO WAY. You need to make EVIL DEAD 4!!! It is time! No more farting around! Leave those hobbits alone.

First, the Venture Bros Season 2 dvd is on sale this week.

Next, to celebrate, and raise some vacation money, Jack Publick is ebaying off 14 pieces of his original art for the DVD. Links and more pictures in the link.

[Thanks to Kenneth Plume for the link]

Walt Handelsman has won the 2007 Cartooning Puliztzer “For his stark, sophisticated cartoons and his impressive use of zany animation.” It was his second win in the category (He also won in 1997.) Ray Bradbury and John Coltrane were awarded special Pulitzers. Mormac McCarthy won the fiction prize for The Road.

Editor and Publisher had more on his win:

A late-2005 crash course in Web animation helped Walt Handelsman win the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning today.

“I submitted 10 still cartoons and 10 animations,” said the Newsday of Melville, N.Y., staffer, adding that “the judges mentioned the animation” when they praised his 2006 portfolio of work.

Handelsman taught himself animation starting in November 2005 and then had the first of his many animations posted on Newsday.com in February 2006. “I worked so hard on those things,” said the cartoonist, when reached this afternoon by E&P.

Wow, they’re going fast. ‘Wizard of Id’ cartoonist Brant Parker has died at age 86, Parker of course collaborated on Id with Johnny Hart who passed away last week. Parker had given up drawing the strip some time ago and died in a nursing home.

The Kingdom of Id sprang to life in a New York hotel room when Parker and Hart papered the walls with two-dozen Wizard panels. After touring the impromptu gallery, a syndicate executive bought the strip.

Launched in 1964, Wizard appears in more than 1,000 newspapers.

Hart was already drawing the Stone Age strip B.C. when he sought out Parker to help wring humor from the Middle Ages. They had met in 1950 when Parker, an artist for the Binghamton Press newspaper in upstate New York, judged a high school art contest that Hart had entered.

While Parker drew the Wizard pictures, Hart came up with the gags that they refined together.

“It’s two different kinds of thinking, always,” Parker told the Los Angeles Times in 1986. “The trick is to find two people who are basically alike. … We both enjoy the same kind of humor, so it’s been a great relationship.”

>
Both B.C. and The Wizard of Id will continue under the auspices of Hart and Parker family members.

Speaking of Hart, there’s a nice report of his funeral here:

With a mixture of laughter and tears, hundreds of mourners said goodbye Friday to Johnny Hart, a man who was as well known for his generous Christian spirit as he was for his world-renowned comic strips.

Hart’s funeral, held at the Nineveh Presbyterian Church, included the testimony of family and friends who described the “B.C.” comic strip creator as an eternal child with a heart of gold.

“Johnny Hart loved children,” said Pastor Emrys Tyler, who officiated at the ceremony.

Hart, a devout Christian and a Sunday school teacher at the small country church for more than 15 years, died last Saturday after suffering a stroke in his Nineveh home. He enjoyed nearly every aspect of life, Tyler said, and made those he knew feel like a celebrity

.

Bob at Four Realities reports on last nights Bryan Talbot talk in Toronto:

Most of his presentation then looked at individual pages of the new book and discussed how they fit into the larger picture of either the history of Sunderland, the history of Carroll or the history of comics, occasionally adding some details and anecdotes that didn’t make it into the book. He also talks a bit about his work process and artistic choices, like where he deliberately evokes the styles of some older comics as it seems appropriate for the scene (Jack Kirby for the Battle of Hastings, Herge’s TINTIN for his trip to Morocco, 1950s “Boy’s Own” British comics for the heroic tale of Jack Crawford, Sir John Tenniel at various times, of course, like the adaptation of “Jabberwocky”). He also talks a bit about his artistic process in this book, which is heavily based in digital manipulation of images to get various effects, with a step-by-step look at how he took an image of the boat that Alice Liddell travelled to America on, added waves, smoke and birds and tinted it for final use. Some other interesting anecdotes on the production include how he got permission for use of photos of the Bayeux Tapestry with some product placement and how he sampled the colouring of some old comics to make the Jack Kirby inspired segment more authentic. There are several dozen interesting asides like that.

Plus, Everyone has been linking to this review of ALICE IN SUNDERLAND done in the style of the book and so will we.

Will the future belong to the pamphlet peepers or the book buyers? The debate continues at Matt Maxwell’s blog:

So, just jump in and do pamphlets and not worry about the trade, since it’s all a sunk cost. Well, that’s great, only in this marketplace, monthlies tend to shed sales pretty regularly (assuming you’re an indie, and even if you’re one of the big guys.) Of course, you still have to come up with a way to pay for the initial content that you want to print up. Which leads us right back to the issue of paying creators enough so that they can keep the bounty of ramen and head cheese flowing (or tofu if you’re vegan…or hate head cheese, like myself). I suppose there’s a potential solution in creators simply being offered advances, but the publishers would have to make enough money to actually do that (and really, most of them can’t afford even the most basic advertising, he said, looking over Diamond’s rate sheets for pages in PREVIEWS.)

But we can’t grow the market until we have some money to spend to grow the market. Man, my head’s beginning to spin here.

ToonBrew looks at the Online Oglers:

Yes, this could be done online, but the ability of webcomics to gain a following by sticking to fairly traditional formulas seems to have enticed all but a few artists to do nothing pump out the same old stuff, perhaps with a “fuck” or two thrown in for good measure. That word makes their comics 26% better, after all. I don’t think I’ve seen a single full page layout on the web that was anything more than a mind-numbing extension of the already mind-numbing 3 panel talking head strips. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I’d love to see more artists really taking advantage of the infinite canvas. The only other direct “problem” with pamphlets posed in the article, is that “no one seems to want to try it” in the United States. This obviously is not a compelling reason why no one should try it. The problem is that the comic industry has always been enslaved to tradition. That’s why webcomics are still not nearly as big as they could be.

More at Crocodile Caucus and The Comics Reporter.

§ Whatever happened to the rest of Hill andWang’s non-fiction graphic novel series, we were wondering just the other day. WEll, ICv2 answers the question:

Hill and Wang plans to release Ronald Reagan: A Graphic Biography, written by Andrew Helfer (Malcolm X: A Graphic Biography) with art by Steve Buccellato and Joe Staton in September, after it was originally announced for last November (see “Three Non-Fiction Graphic Novels: From Hill and Wang”).

The lines first offering, the (/11 Report graphic novel adaptation was a best selling, and we hear the Malcolm X book did well, too.

§ Sequential reports on last week’s Festival de la bande dessinee de Quebec .

§ Devil’s Due is hiring:

Devil’s Due Publishing is currently hiring for the position of Webstore and Inventory Manager to build upon an already established 6 year online store and pick up and run with the newly available position.

§ Danielle Corsetto is running GIRLS WITH SLINGSHOTS licensing herself again.

I recently re-acquired the licensing rights to Girls With Slingshots from 360ep, the company I signed with a few years ago. This was a mutual break that was made because, basically, I can’t do simple math. The contract was for 36 months, and for some reason my mental calculator told me that 36 months = 2 years.

So I started planning to have the rights back in my hands this year, before I realized that our contract wouldn’t be up until much later! Fellow art majors, do yourselves a favor and take a math class before you go into business for yourselves.

That said, I’d like to extend a big “thank you” to the 360ep team for getting me started and giving me a ton of confidence in myself!

§ Listen to WE ARE ON OUR OWN’s Miriam Katin on NPR’s Studio 360:

Miriam Katin was only a toddler when she and her mother hid from the Nazis in the Hungarian countryside. Now, more than 60 years later, she’s turned their harrowing story of escape and survival into a graphic memoir called We Are On Our Own.

We came across this comment from Vivian Hadding Visual Storyteller on The Beat and it is perhaps one of the nicest comments we’ve ever received:

Then there’s Publisher’s Weekly The Beat, “The News Blog of Comics Culture” by Heidi MacDonald. This is a huge site dedicated to reviews and the latest news on comics and their impact around the globe. Grab a cup of coffee, tea, or cocoa and plan to be here awhile as well.

Thanks, Vivian. Our beverage of choice for writing The Beat is Vietnamese instant coffee, but whatever floats your boat.

We’re off to the continent today, and so today’s posting are sure to be error and typo-riddled. Apologies in advance.

theme ringtone bond james

The first data services appeared on ringtone wav s starting with person-to-person SMS text messaging in Finland in 1993.

The native are restless. Or at least the artists are. In our previous item we mentioned Bryan Talbot and ALICE IN SUNDERLAND — it took him five years to finish it, and that’s a long time to be working on anything. The one downside of the graphic novel boom is that creators have to sequester themselves for years at a time, and sometimes they have to sequester themselves from a paycheck as well. It started with Becky Cloonan:

So we’re seeing this huge boom in “OEL” books right now, believe me I think it’s great. Many people are seeing more publishing opportunities and this 5×7 format has really taken off (my favorite size is still 6×9 for gn’s though). But I have a bad feeling about it– some people say the market is getting over-saturated– and I agree to a point. However, I feel that the biggest problem is that most artists weren’t meant to work this way, that is drawing 150+ pages at a time.

“But look at all the graphic novels coming out from Japan!” Yes, look at them! And they are all first published in small, 10-20 page chunks in a weekly or monthly magazine. (Not to mention most artists have assistants there– hmm it’s not much different than the so called “assembly line” production you see on mainstream American comics.)

Corey Lewis also chimed in:

But how fucking honestly reasonable is it to ask ONE DUDE to produce a roughly-200 page OGN in the span of a few months? IS THIS SOMETHING WE CAN REALLY DEPEND ON? I’m dying every fucking second. I have no studio. I have no “people”. Sharknife Co. Ltd. ™ is all one guy. It takes a shit ass load of energy and intelligence to construct an entire universe for this shit!!! I’m not complaining!!! I FUCKING LOVE TO DO IT. But without instant success, piles of royalty checks or some kind of media tie-in deal, the OGN format is amazingly hard for a young BASICALLY “freelance” artist to commit to.

A few days ago Tania del Rio piped up, and working on the monthly Sabrina comic, she had a different take.

But now that I’ve been working on Sabrina for 3 years I can definitely see the advantages of this format. Not only do I get the gratification of seeing my work on newsstands consistently, I have a steady paycheck. Every week I turn in pages, and every 2 weeks I get a paycheck. It’s nice! As long as I keep doing my work, I don’t have to worry about when my payment will arrive (a rarity in the world of freelance!).

I’ve also been lucky in regards to getting fans and loyal readers. Rather than putting out one graphic novel, and trying to maintain my audience’s attention for the next year until the next one comes out, I’m fortunate that new issues of my work are available at any given time, and that each month, I gain new readers. For every issue I get feedback - I can tweak a future storyline if I realize my fans aren’t digging the direction I’m going in, or sometimes I’ll deliberately do the opposite just to stir the fans up! (Hehehe)

Tintin Pantoja points out the economics of multi-formats:

The real money is in reprints, in the trade collection and merchandising.
You only really start to seriously profit from your comics after they’ve been reprinted and exploited several times, in different formats. I know it’s pretty cynical, but look at it this way: a comic artist has only so much time to work on a comic. Comics are notoriously labor-intensive. Sure you can have your $15 super-glossy-cardstock full-color album-sized masterpiece, but why not subsidize it by another edition of the same comic, but this time printed on toilet paper, selling for $1?

This is exactly Phil Foglio’s strategy: Girl Genius comes out on the web, as a black and white phonebook-sized newsprint ‘omnibus’ , and as a full color hardbound collector’s album. My argument here is that to make money, creators have to be a little more flexible in terms of formatting. That way one can have the art and the money too. Sure, the omnibus looks like crap (compared to the albums anyway) but they’re pulling in newer readers. We need a cheap disposable and serialized format AS WELL AS a prestige format, even if one or the other isn’t the bext format for your book.

Vanessa Santone also comments, while wondering if the Shojo Beat-like anthology can ever take off here.

I would love to see a low-price monthly anthology, but the industry doesn’t seem to be going that way. Shoujo Beat is $5.99 an issue. I assume that Shonen Jump is about the same. But nobody seems to want to try it with original comics in American. There’s an interview with Kurt Hassler on Newsarama (which I haven’t read yet, ’cause I’m lazy), about Yen Press. They’re going to be publishing a monthly anthology, containing translated Japanese comics, and original American comics. I’m hoping that if things go well with Yen Press, other companies might try following suit.

As a creator, I would love to get my comics out to people every month. (But then again, I’m not published, and I’m slow as fuck, so who am I to talk?) On the other hand, I don’t think OGNs are necessarily a bad thing, either. After all, comics are books, and prose novels don’t come out on monthly, one chapter at a time, schedule. I’m kind of torn on the subject.

Vanessa is torn…WE’RE ALL TORN! Unfortunately, the pamphlet long ago ceased to be a “satisfying chunk.” The monthly comics ARE essentially one-story serializations of the graphic novels. Go back and look at that Web 2.0 business plan Joey Manley was talking about. With the monthly print anthology — Yen and Viz aside — still failing to find any traction here, monetizing web serialization for the eventual print collection appears to be the most likely business model for the comics of the future, whether its in the iTunes/Eyemelt model, or the Penny Arcade model.

As all signs point to Marvel and DC ramping up their online business plans, the delivery system is really going to become more and more important.

Friday night we stopped by Hanleys to say hi to Bryan Talbot and get our copy of ALICE IN SUNDERLAND signed. It was an odd day, as the signing almost had to be cancelled when someone jumped out of the Empire State Building across the street. Only one leg made it all the way to the street, but it landed right across from Hanleys. Brrrrrr…we managed to snag an invite to dinner afterwards with Bryan and his wife Mary, who is a doctor of linguistics and got to grill Bryan with all kind of questions on how he managed to create this singular masterpiece.

Apparently the book has gotten tons of attention in England, where it was published by the UK arm of Random House. (The acquiring editor is also Salmon Rushdie’s editor.) Recounting as it does the history of Sunderland, a rather little known part of England, the book has made Talbot a local hero, with a gallery show and numerous cover stories in the local papers. It’s already broken even sales-wise, we’re told.

Anyway, you can have your very OWN evening with Bryan Talbot tonight in Toronto. Considering that he’s truly one of the unsung masters of the comics form (and an early adapter of the graphic novel format itself) we highly recommend checking it out:

Alice in Sunderland
A Conversation with Bryan Talbot
In support of his new graphic novel ALICE IN SUNDERLAND
Monday, April 16th, 2007, 6PM
The Merril Collection (Lillian H. Smith Library, 239 College St.)
Free to attend.

Hosted by SPACE’s Mark Askwith

Bryan Talbot is coming to Toronto! The creator of One Bad Rat, Luther Arkwright, and the artist of The Sandman Special #1: The Song of Orpheus is touring North America in support of his massive new graphic novel, Alice In Sunderland.

Talbot will be doing a presentation from the work, and will be interviewed on stage by Mark Askwith from the SPACE channel.

We’re very excited to see such an esteemed creator visiting us all the way from the U.K., so save the date and make sure to come out for this rare appearance. Both The Tale of One Bad Rat and the brand-new Alice In Sunderland are available for sale at The Beguiling now!

Yep, you read that right. Superhero Hype has the casting notice:

SPIDER-MAN
Theatre
MUSICAL
AEA 29-HOUR REHEARSED READING

Director: Julie Taymor
Music and Lyrics: Bono and The Edge of U2
Musical Supervisor: Teese Gohl
Book: Julie Taymor and Glen Berger
Producer: Hello Entertainment/David Garfinkle, Martin McCallum, Marvel Entertainment
Casting Director: Telsey + Company
Rehearsals: Begin 7/2/07 in NYC
Reading: 7/12/07 and 7/13/07

The notice includes casting calls for Peter Parker, MJ, J. Jonah, and…

[ARACHNE] Female, 20-35 years old, any ethnicity. A beautiful, boastful young woman turned into a spider for her hubris and lack of respect for the gods. She subsequently appears to Peter Parker and the audience as in turn a powerful spider-woman who comes from another time to inspire Peter; an otherworldly lover; a bride; a terrifying (and sexy) dark goddess of vengeance; a dance partner in a charged and violent spiders dance of death; and, finally, a lonely, fragile young woman. Possesses an ethereal, unique, gorgeous singing voice. Strong Celtic, Balkan style, e.g., Sinead O’Connor. Outside the box ideas are welcomed. Could be someone from the music industry.

Okay now, we are very VERY excited by this because Julie Taymor is one of the authentic geniuses of today. Long known for her visionary theater stagings, she actually made THE LION KING Broadway show an amazing post-modern multi-culti experience. TITUS ANDRONICUS was just radical, and her upcoming ACROSS THE UNIVERSE Beatles musical is supposed to be incredible…too incredible for the studio to even release. You can see the trailer here.

Of course, we haven’t even mentioned the idea of Bono and the Edge writing a Spidey musical.

“When a maaaaaaan must climb the towers,
He’s caught in a web, caught in a web…”

We can hear the hit single “When I look in your eyes, MJ” already.

Truly, this marks the beginning of a very special story for The Beat, one we will give our most specialest coverage.

Didn’t see that one coming: Edward Norton is to star as the Hulk in the Louis Leterrier-directed film, set for release in ‘08.

Marvel Studios, which has a $525 million credit facility obtained through Merrill Lynch, made “The Incredible Hulk” its second film under that arrangement, and seeks to make a sequel that is less self-serious and more in line with the comic series and TV show. Leterrier directed the action-filled “Transporter 2,” and “Unleashed.”

The new pic begins with Banner on the run, trying to avoid capture long enough to cure the condition that turns him into a misunderstood green menace.

“Edward Norton is a rare talent and one of the most versatile actors in the business,” Marvel Studios production president Kevin Feige said in a statement. “His ability to transform into a particular role makes him the ideal choice to take on the character of Bruce Banner and the Hulk. Edward is perfectly suited to bring one of the most popular and important Marvel icons to the bigscreen in a new and exciting way.”

Pumuckl, a lovable water sprite plucked from folkelore to become a popular German cartoon character is at the center of a legal battle over whether he can get a girlfriend or not:

Ellis Kaut, 86, who created Pumuckl 45 years ago, has taken out an injunction against her one-time friend, the designer Barbara von Johnson, who was responsible for the red-haired sprite’s transition from storybook hero to cartoon character.

Mrs von Johnson has spearheaded a competition at a Munich television station to design a spirited girlfriend for Pumuckl after viewers expressed their wish that he should finally have a mate. But Mrs Kaut said she objected because “Pumuckl is and always will be a descendant of the Klabauter, a type of spirit, [and] spirits don’t generally have a distinct sex life”. If he had a girlfriend, it would go against his literary character, she said.

Although looking at the little guy, he might seem like he needs some company, some fans were not as charitable, writing such things as “They can’t do that! Pumuckl CAN’T get married. He’s a spirit. Spirits don’t marry.” and “It could be the downfall of Pumuckl, as with many sitcoms, once the sexual tension is gone.”

We say he’s ready for love, and the fans should let him have it.

It’s a tough blow to lose Kurt Vonnegut and Don Ho and have to pay taxes all in the same week and we’re still in recovery. We’re leaving for Barcelona tomorrow, so posting will be very sporadic this week, but we hope to have some coverage from the Salon. Accent on “hope”.

Speaking of Vonnegut, his eight tips for writing a story have been making the rounds — hopefully these are actually from the great man, and not like that “Wear sunscreen” thing he was credited with, but they are sound guidelines in any case.

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.*

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Everyone has been linking to FIST-A-CUFFS. Run by San Hiti, it’s a game wherein artists draw imaginary team-ups and readers vote on who would win. Artists like Hiti, Paul Pope, Joe Quinones, Matthew Bernier, Kieron Dwyer and many more are contributing and a whole new round has just begun. Bookmark!

A rescued horse! Singing in Armenian! Close encounters in the sauna! And…the promise of a high colonic. This may just be the best season of TUF yet.
(more…)

Via PR:
,

Del Rey Manga is pleased to report that after only 4 days on sale, AVRIL LAVIGNE’S MAKE 5 WISHES (Volume 1; $12.95; 978-0-345-50058-8) has gone back to press for a second printing. Hailed as “a disturbingly well constructed comic” and “a testament to what can be done with one of these projects” (Ain’t It Cool News), the manga will continue to grow in popularity when Avril Lavigne’s highly-anticipated new album The Best Damn Thing releases on April 17 from RCA Records. The book is promoted in the album package and Lavigne will be doing a media blitz around the release, including appearances on Saturday Night Live, Good Morning America, and Late Show with David Letterman. Volume 2 of AVRIL LAVIGNE’S MAKE 5 WISHES ($12.95; 978-0-345-50079-3) goes on sale July 3.

Diamond has posted the March sales charts, and it was another big month for Marvel, while DC and Dark Horse had equal numbers of books in the top ten, thanks to BUFFY SEASON 8 #1’s astonishing numbers. Newsarama has this to say.
Paul O’Brien had his own take:

The March 2007 direct market sales are out, and it’s another drubbing for DC. Oh dear. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 #1 made the top ten (at number 9), prompting Newsarama to observe that it “may be the first non-Marvel title to finish in the Top Ten in several years.” Or, you know, you could go and look it up. Actually, I believe they’re right - there hasn’t been a non-Marvel/DC book in the DM top ten since 2003, when retro licensed properties enjoyed a short-lived fad.

We did our own quick and dirty little calculation of the top ten sales #’s. These are rough but the magnitude is about right.

QtyRank RetailRank Index Description Price VEN
1 1 360.9 CAPTAIN AMERICA #25 CW* $3.99 MAR 291,246
2 3 175.52 MIGHTY AVENGERS #1 $3.99 MAR 141,645
3 6 171.1 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #539* $2.99 MAR 138,078
4 2 171.01 CIVIL WAR INITIATIVE* $4.99 MAR 138,005
5 4 169.37 DARK TOWER GUNSLINGER BORN #2 (Of 7)* $3.99 MAR 136,682
6 5 161.62 JUSTICE LEAGUE O/AMERICA #6* $3.50 DC 130,427
7 7 148.47 NEW AVENGERS #28 $2.99 MAR 119,815
8 8 139.66 CIVIL WAR CONFESSION $2.99 MAR 112,706
9 9 136.55 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1* $2.99 DAR 110,196
10 11 118.36 WOLVERINE #52* $2.99 MAR 95,517

Here’s the Top Ten GN’s, with another strong showing for Dark Horse.

Qty Rank Retail Rank Index Title Price Ven
1 1 10.84 300 HC $30.00 DAR
2 30 7.81 NARUTO VOL 13 TP $7.95 VIZ
3 9 7.60 EX MACHINA VOL 5 SMOKE SMOKE TP (MR) $12.99 DC
4 3 6.53 SPIDER-MAN BIRTH O/VENOM TP $29.99 MAR
5 12 6.31 NEW AVENGERS VOL 4 COLLECTIVE TP $14.99 MAR
6 18 6.03 STAR WARS BOBA FETT VOL 1 TP MAN W/MISSION $12.95 DAR
7 42 5.81 DEATH NOTE VOL 10 TP $7.99 VIZ
8 10 5.63 ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR VOL 7 GOD WAR TP $16.99 MAR
9 7 5.28 FAFHRD & GRAY MOUSER TP $19.95 DAR
10 39 5.12 WARCRAFT VOL 3 GN (Of 3) $9.99 TK

PAINKILLER JANE, the new Sci Fi series based on the Event comics, debuts tonight at 10 pm. According to the website Agent Jane Vasko discovers she has powers of super-healing, and joins a team to ferret out “Neuros”, individuals with superhuman neurological powers.

To prevent a panic, the government has kept the discovery of Neuros a secret, assembling a covert unit to identify and contain Neuros. Operating from a secure abandoned subway platform, the core members of the unit are Andre McBride (Rob Stewart), the seasoned team leader; Connor King (Noah Danby), a special agent regularly armed with a smart remark; Riley Jensen (Sean Owen Roberts), an evolved computer whiz in charge of surveillance and communications; Dr. Seth Carpenter (Stephen Lobo), the unit’s doctor and scientist; Joe Waterman (Nathaniel Deveaux), the middle-aged caretaker of the subway; and Maureen Bowers (Alaina Huffman), Jane’s former DEA partner and friend, who, like Jane, was recruited after discovering top-secret information about Neuros.

The show stars former Terminatrix Kristanna Loken, who sat down with CBR for a chat:

It was when I’d read the pilot and the comic book actually that I really fell in love with the Jane Vasko character. She had a lot of depth to work with. I love the fact that she could heal but not from the emotional or physically pain, which is an interesting concept for me. I liked the back story. I just felt like she was a very rich character and I wanted to make her very real and even though she does have these healing abilities, she doesn’t know why or how or the genesis of when they began so it gives a lot of room to grow in the series as a character.

JANE co-creator Jimmy Palmiotti is up on the set this week, as a matter of fact — he’s both writing and directing episodes of the show. (We snagged the above photo from his MySpace account.) Asked how things are going, he said:

Things are going great. My episode I wrote is probably he closest thing you will see on the series that resembles the comic and the idea that even the best intentions can go bad. The cast and crew are so into the show I actually have been trouble getting to sleep each night even after working 14 hour days because I’m so excited.

UPDATE: Joey Manley happens to have added a very long list of articles on webcomics and digital comics content right here. Great resource for anyone thinking about these things.

UPDATE 2: Now Tom Spurgeon has weighed in with a long post, but here’s the money quote for us anyway:

* I can’t for the life of me figure out why all the comics companies haven’t pursued this more aggressively. All comic books should be available in digital form by now. When the notoriously conservative newspaper strip business is years ahead of you, you’re moving too slow. My only guess is that media companies may be resistant to change by nature and it’s only when an undeniably effective application drives the business in a certain direction that businesses follow. It’s worth noting that what we have in comics right now isn’t a breaking through a wall driven by a super-great way of reading comics that is years ahead of what we thought possible, but a slow thinning of a membrane in areas like speed of downloads and screen size that make reading comics through existing applications increasingly pleasurable.

As of this writing (a mortifyingly late hour) our reading comics on computer poll stood thus:

I like it BETTER than paper! (724) 53.47%
Pixels or pulp — doesn’t matter to me as long as its Bendis! (72) 5.32%
Only in an emergency. (558) 41.21%

That was a BIG come from behind victory for paperless reading. As of 6 pm it was more like 74%– some 500 souls — preferred paper, but somewhere along the way, either 600 people came along who liked onscreen, or someone set up a poll-voting widget or whatever. The poll was completely unscientific, but you can make of it what you will.

We have a bunch of “new media/tech” blogs on our RSS feed, but we only get to read them once a week or so. We checked them out today to test the pundit zeitgiest. Dealing with snippets of fact like we do, sometimes it’s hard to put together a coherent big picture. we can only get a pointilistic view of the world sometimes. But all of it points SOMEWHERE.
(more…)