Tintin Pantoja update
12/12/07
Tintin Pantoja may not have gotten that Wonder Woman gig, but her mangafied version of Hamlet is coming out next year from Wiley. Here’s a preview from Active Anime
Archive for December, 2007
RIP: Wayne Howard and Al Scaduto
12/12/07A couple of comic book passings recently that we were remiss in not noting:
Mark Evanier notes the death of Wayne Howard who contributed much work to the Charlton line.
Comic book artist Wayne Howard has died. One of the few African-American comic book artists at the time he broke into the field, Howard learned his craft in the fanzines of the sixties and at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. But he told me he learned most of what he knew about comics from his brief time assisting Wally Wood from 1968 to 1969. (Some sources say ‘69 but you can see Wayne’s name hidden all throughout the backgrounds of Captain Action #1, which Wood and his crew produced in 1968.)
The passing of Al Scaduto, artist of They’ll Do It Every Time, one of those timeless panels that make newspapers seem eternal, is noted, most touchingly by Mike Lynch.
Back in 2005, Al told the Gang about The School of Industrial Arts reunion. SIA was founded by four young art teachers in 1936, who built desks from old orange crates and plywood. Even though it’s changed its name to the High School of Art and Design and moved from its former Civil War hospital building to a modern building on Second Avenue, it’s still referred to as SIA by those who graduated. After the graduation ceremony from the High School of Industrial Arts in 1946, Al’s father told him he would starve. That same year, Al started at King Features. By 1948, he became a full time assistant for Ben Dunn, but still found time for lots of other work. A multiple winner of the NCS Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award for the strip, he’s been soloing on They’ll Do It Every Time since 1989. Not bad for a boy from the Bronx!
Kristin Bell does Slave Leia
12/12/07
Answer: What is pandering?
(NB: this is a still from the movie FANBOYS, in which some Star Wars nerds travel to Skywalker Ranch to get a copy of PHANTOM MENACE for their dying friend.
Death by Jar Jar?)
Sparkly holiday icons from Mitch O’Connell
12/12/07Famed illustrator Mitch O”Connell writes to let us know that “glitter graphics artisan, Colleen Truscott, recently surprised me by giving dozens and dozens of my graphics the glitter treatment.” Truscutt has given permission for the icons to be given away on O”Connell’s website, so go spice up your MySpace or whatever.
Wonder Woman reëxamined
12/12/07What with an actual WOMAN writing Wonder Woman, the media is all up in Diana’s grill. Over at The New York Sun, Grady Hendrix has a comprehensive look, including a clear-eyed analysis of just what it was that creator William Moulton Marston was getting at.
Wonder Woman has had her bottom spanked by glassy-eyed adult babies from Grown-Down Land. She has been rendered helpless by the prehensile moustache of Egg Fu, a 30-foot-tall, communist egg. She has been turned into a gorilla against her will, battled villains as depressing as the Paper Man (who has all the powers of paper) and the Mouse Man (who controls mice with his mind), and her own mother has tried to kill her on more than one occasion. But never before has Wonder Woman faced an enemy as demoralizing as the ones she’s found in 2007 — the 66th year, this month, of her super life.
Meanwhile, Reuters of Singapore interviews new writer Gail Simone and sadly passes on the misstatement that Simone is the first regular woman writer on the book:
Shiny red boots, wasp-thin waist, razor-sharp tiara and big, big hair. Wonder Woman, the world’s top female superhero may be 66 years old, but she’s still got it, Gail Simone, the comic’s author says.
Simone, the character’s self-professed biggest fan, is the comic book’s first ongoing female writer. During a visit to Singapore recently, she told Reuters how the superhero remains an icon of “woman power” nearly 70 years after her creation.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, we still want to see WW in a truly girl-friendly guise, like the notorious proposal by Tintin Pantoja:
Kibbles ‘n’ Bits epic edition
12/12/07So much to talk about, so many links in email.
§ The Walrus, a news and arts magazine based up in Toronto, has a new 4-page Julie Doucet strip, which is available for free as a PDF on their website. There’s also an interview with Doucet.
TW: Is it frustrating to still be considered a comic artist when you’ve more-or-less ditched the medium for nearly a decade?
JD: Yes it has been very frustrating. I knew it would be difficult to make people admit that I can do something different, but not THAT difficult! But it is finally changing now, at least here in Montréal, because I did many group shows, a solo exhibition, and last summer the Biennale de Montréal, that kind of did the job. It seems that the world of contemporary art got curious about comics in the past 3-4-5 years… and the comic world opened itself to more experimental work. So yes, it was natural… in the end. I still live from my royalties, and comics original sales… art is not very lucrative!
§ The Elephantmen: War Toys #1 | Trailer is online.
§ Lev Grossman at Time presents his Top 10 graphic novels, , an eclectic list led by…ACHEWOOD!
§ Brady Russell looks at innate artistic talent.
§ Ivan Brandon’s South American blog.
§ Girls! Girls! Girls! Val D’Orazio reports on NYAF for FoL
§ Renee Witterstaetter has a new dvd out featuring a candid conversation with Bill Sienkiewicz.
§ Virgin comics scripter Saurav Mohapatra joins groups blog The Comics Waiting Room.
“In the comic book, we’re presented with an end-of-the-world scenario pretty darn quickly. It then becomes the adventures of Yorick and 355, but I would say that a movie version must have more of a sense of urgency and jeopardy. It’s not going to be a ‘Mad Max’ film. Where we want to start is what simply would the world be like if this “absurd” thing were to happen,” Ellsworth continued. “It’s actually going to have more of a haunting feel to it as Yorick our main character is attempting to get his bearings and what the immediate aftermath of the plague means.”
Here comes IDW’s SPEED RACER
12/12/07
Speaking of Speed, IDW has announced a new Speed Racer comic, written by Arie Kaplan and drawn by Robby Musso.
Fans of the iconic Speed Racer know that the title character can drive-and fast (his car, after all, is named the Mach-5), but fast enough to travel through time?
Perhaps Speed can’t, but his legend is certainly one for the ages. And in January, IDW Publishing will take that concept into overdrive, debuting Speed Racer: Chronicles of the Racer, a monthly miniseries that will expand the decades-old mythos into exciting new directions as it tells the stories of Racers throughout the generations.
“There hasn’t been a Speed Racer in comics at least five years, and we’re taking it in a direction that it has never gone before,” says Chris Ryall, IDW publisher and editor-in-chief. “These stories expand the entire Speed Racer legend. We look at the Speed Racers of the past-incarnations throughout history, from the Roman times to the medieval era, and even the swashbuckling high seas.”
Del Rey to publish Gabaldon original GN
12/12/07Yet another NYT #1 bestselling author is scratching that graphic novel itch; this time it’s Diana Gabaldon, author of the OUTLANDER series, which has some 15 million copies in print. She’ll pen a new yarn for Del Rey.
Del Rey, an imprint of Ballantine Books at the Random House Publishing Group, announced today that it will publish an original story set in the world of Diana Gabaldon’s bestselling Outlander series, written by Gabaldon herself and illustrated in full color by award-winning artist Hoang Nguyen. The project was acquired by Betsy Mitchell, editor in chief of Del Rey, in negotiations with Gabaldon’s literary agent Russell Galen.
The new story, starring Gabaldon’s beloved characters Claire Randall and Jamie Fraser, opens with Murtagh, Jamie’s godfather, awaiting the return of his godson to Scotland, and the fulfillment of a vow made years before. The graphic novel will be approximately 192 pages and will publish sometime in 2009. Gabaldon’s upcoming new Outlander novel, An Echo in the Bone, is expected to publish that year as well.
Go out, Jerboa!
12/12/07
It’s the real-life inspiration for Pikachu and almost as cute! The very rare and mysterious long-eared jerboa of the Gobi desert has been caught on film for the first time!:
The long-eared jerboa, a tiny nocturnal mammal that is dwarfed by its enormous ears, can be found in deserts in Mongolia and China.
Zoological Society of London (ZSL) scientist Jonathan Baillie said the footage was helping researchers to learn more about the mysterious animal.
The species is classified as endangered on the IUCN Red list.
Videos of the long-tailed, giant-eared little fellas hopping about are on beyond adorable.
We want one!!!
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Speaking of DDGB…
12/12/07
Long, long ago it was announced that DDGB (aka Gerard Butler) would be starring in an adaptation of the manga PRIEST. At NYAF we heard that this is not happening, although you probably could have figured that out.
2008 WB Movie Spectacular
12/12/07Warner Bros. released many stills from upcoming 2008, and in case you have missed them, here they are. Click thumbs for bigger pix!
THE DARK KNIGHT
Time killer/’90s nostalgia
12/12/07
In related news, we are old and busted and need some time in the shop. It’s the quiet time of year anyway, and everyone has better things to do than sit in front of the computer, anyway, unless it’s to buy holiday presents. Which is the only reason we sit in front of the computer any more.
Happy 50th Birthday, P. Bagge!
12/11/07
Wizard changes
12/11/07Wizard VP and Associate Publisher Rob Felton was found to be surplus to requirements yesterday. In addition, “Toy industry guru” and publisher Jim Silver very quietly gave notice over the last few weeks.
This is the latest (and highest) in a string of goings (no comings) at Wizard over the last few months. And oddly, people just couldn’t wait to tell us about it. (Can this same crowd please update us regularly on the comings and goings elsewhere in the biz?) Why all the glee? Well, perhaps it is because Wizard has a lot of disgruntled ex-employees now…or perhaps because their business model is so rooted in the past, and everyone has been telling them that for 7 or 8 years or so.
Speculation on the exits of Felton and Silver involved high paychecks and cost cutting.
WHITEOUT stills released
12/11/07
The first stills from WHITEOUT starring Kate Beckinsale in the film adaptation of the Greg Rucka/Steve Lieber graphic novel have been released.
The film is slated for a June 2008 release.
Burma bans cartooners
12/11/07We don’t always write about the world-wide war on cartooners because we get too depressed, but this story on the media crackdown in Burma caught our eye:
The Burmese regime has banned the work of 19 artists and writers, and some writers and poets are hiding from authorities because they are being pursued for taking part in the September 2007 uprising.
Among those whose works have been banned is the renowned cartoonist Awpikye, whose three-decade-long career was brought to a halt by the ban. He was accused of supporting monks in the September 2007 uprising.
“I cannot draw cartoons now; I am upset about it. My fans cannot see my cartoons anymore,” he said. “I knew about it after the advertisement industry told me about the ban. They told to me that my work had been banned from being published and telecast. Moreover, even my colleagues cannot mention my name in their work. Their work will be censored, too, if they mention my name,” he added.
Sadly we couldn’t find any examples of Awpikye’s work online. Perhaps the job has already been done too well.
Flash revealed
12/11/07Jim Shelley has a somewhat technical yet comprehensible explanation of why Flash doesn’t always look so great and tends to “muck with your fonts.” Complete with screen grabs.
“But Jim, why would I ever reduce an image down by 15% or something like that?”
Well, you wouldn’t, but if you launch the Zuda image viewer on your pc/mac it’s going to set the image to a size that Flash thinks is appropriate for your monitor, which is why some comics look okay when the viewer is full size and some don’t. Flash does this by PROGRAMMATICALLY grabbing the size of your monitor and adjusting the viewer accordingly to completely usurp your screen area. - And since the people building the Zuda viewer don’t really have access to every type of monitor available, you’re gonna get some mixed results.
CBLDF Member Holiday Party tonight!
12/10/07
Tonight, come celebrate comics and the First Amendment, while reveling alongside an all-star line up of creators! The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s NYC Holiday Member party, co-hosted by JahFurry, begins promptly at 7pm and continues until 11pm, with plenty of fun in between, including a live comics jam, raffles and door prizes, live jazz-funk by Avi Bortnick, delicious vittles, and more comics stars than you can shake a sketchbook at. Location: Village Pourhouse, 64 3rd Ave @ 11th St.
Instead of buzzkilling lines for sketches, guests can take advantage of this unique assemblage by getting a CBLDF HOLIDAY JAM SHEET for a $50 donation, which they can then fill with original on-the-spot art from as many artists as they can corral.
Confirmed guest creators include: Kyle Baker, Paul Pope, Moby, Alex Maleev, Douglas Rushkoff, John Lucas, Rick Spears, Dean Haspiel, Josh Neufeld, Nick Bertozzi, Michel Fiffe, Molly Crabapple, Nikki Cook, Dan Goldman, Anthony Lappe, Andy MacDonald, Arvid Nelson, Jen Tong, Ryan Roman, Kevin Colden, Alec Longstreth, Vito Delsante, and Ulises Farinas, and Paul Azaceta.
Throughout the night, the Fund is giving a way a host of great door prizes, including gift certificates at partner stores Forbidden Planet, Jim Hanley’s Universe, and Midtown Comics. The Fund is also raffling off prizes including an Arthur Suydam signed Marvel Zombies hardcover, full signed sets of Strangers in Paradise, Liberty Meadows, Invincible, and much more.
The first 50 Members to attend will take away a fantastic gift bag that includes a limited edition signed Paul Pope print, collectible preview editions of Jungle Girl, Superpowers, Infinite Horizon, and Displaced Persons, a variant cover of Sinbad: Rogue of Mars #1, a DJ Spooky sampler CD, a Will Eisner graphic novel and additional signed CBLDF prints!
While having fun, partygoers can get some holiday gift shopping done at the fundraising table, boasting a wonderful assortment of signed graphic novels, comics, and original art.
So, come to the Village Pourhouse and bring your CBLDF member card or sign up at the door to be a part of this unforgettable night for comics!
For more info or to join: http://www.cbldf.org/pr/archives/000344.shtml
Ron Paul likes Paul Pope
12/10/07
Yikes! Never saw that one coming.
Presidential candidate Ron Paul picks his super-hero favorite at ComicMix:
“My favorite comic book superhero is Baruch Wane, otherwise known as Batman, in The Batman Chronicles. “The Berlin Batman,” #11 in the series by Paul Pope, details Batman’s attempts to rescue the confiscated works of persecuted Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, from Nazi Party hands. “
Jughead’s dynamic new look!
12/10/07
“Dynamic new look….a story that will shock you….” Can Dark Jughead be far behind? Or perhaps the heartbreaking storyline “One more shake.”
Last year, one of the most talked about stories in the comic book industry was the Dynamic New Look for Betty & Veronica; as seen in the story “Bad Boy Trouble”. Thousands of Archie fans responded by e-mail, snail mail and phone expressing their disapproval of the new look before the story was even printed. Those same fans, after reading “Bad Boy Trouble” let us know how much they enjoyed the story once seeing it in print. They thought it was fun and interesting to see the characters with a different look, AS LONG AS IT WASN’T IN ALL OF THE COMICS. The story was so popular it was collected into a Graphic Novel.
Thanks to the response of those thousands of fans, we have created another story with a Dynamic New Look. This time, starring Jughead in a story that will shock you. You can see Jughead’s Dynamic New Look in four consecutive issues of Jughead’s Double Digest starting with issue #139 through issue #142, with Dynamic art by the legendary Joe Staton. Remember, it is only one of the stories in Jughead’s Double Digest, the remaining stories will be in the classic Archie art style you know and love. Make sure you contact your local comic book retailer to reserve your copies today.
NYAF Photo Parade Part 2
12/10/07
This may have been a con too far for The Beat…we’re too tuckered to post anything, but we will run some photos by you, how does that sound? Although we apologize in advance because our camera settings were screwed up all weekend and all the pictures came out dark. Above: An overview of the hall.
(more…)
Marvel and Del Rey announce manga pact
12/10/07Yep, it was true, Marvel and Del Rey announced a small — four book — but brainy venture. A shojo manga version of the X-men written by Raina Telegemeier and Dave Roman with art by Anzu, and a Wolverine shonen manga written by Antony Johnston. Both series are planned for Spring 2009 and will run for two volumes. Both will reimagine the characters for a YA manga audience, while keeping the elements that have made them so popular.
Below are some of Anzu’s VERY preliminary character sketches for the X-men. Wolverine is positively bishonen — it’s our understanding that he won’t be appearing in the shojo X-men book, however we missed the very start of the panel so we may be wrong on this.
Official PR in the jump.
What you need to know about NYAF
12/10/07We’ll have our own detailed anthropological observations when we’re not feeling under the weather. However here are facts and figures.
§ ICv2 interviews the showrunner John McGeary who estimates attendance at 15,000.
§ IGN reports on Stuart Levy’s amusing activites:
Have the Tokyopop convention planners lost their minds? Not really. Rather than do a typical presentation, Levy wanted to film a “documentary” chronicling a fake Van Von Hunter’s journey from “rags to riches”. But Levy wanted audience participation and guided them to create the footage he wanted. Attendees were prompted to boo on cue, shout lines, throw giveaway armbands and, finally, rush the door as Hunter, Levy and panelist Steven Calcote ran outside, using chairs as “riot shields.” The entire ordeal was filmed through two cameras and, oddly enough, featured relatively little about the manga itself (which is very real). The final Hunter documentary is due to be released in 2008. The manga series, first released in 2005, follows the humorous action-adventures of a hero who hunts evil monsters across the Kingdom of Dikay.
§ The Del Rey crew has a detailed blog.
§ The winner of the World Cosplay Summit US Division blogs.
§ Who attended the show? This LJ post really says it all:
So. Yesterday morning I took the ACT again. When I was done, my parents and I spent an hour stuck in NYC traffic in order to go to the con. When we finally got there (and found a place to park, and cursed out all the people who came in buses) I made a beeline for the nearest manga booth (Emma vol.5, +Anima vol. 6, Apothecarius Argentum vol. 3, Sugar Sugar Rune vol. 7). And then I found shadow_maw, ditched my parents, and we set off to explore the con.
Academic Libraries discover graphic novels
12/10/07Karen Green, Columbia University’s Ancient/Medieval Studies Librarian and Graphic Novel selector starts a blog at Comixology explains how an Ivy league university starts collecting graphic novels:
University libraries tend to get their books from large vendors according to a subject outline known as an approval plan, and let’s just say that Columbia’s approval plans didn’t include material from DC Comics, Fantagraphics, or First Second—these publishers simply weren’t on our radar. If a professor requested a graphic novel for a course, it would be bought—otherwise? Not a chance.
Quick Hits 12/10
12/10/07§ Craig Thompson (Blankets) talks about his…..Grammy nomination???
§ The power of superheroes comes to rescue errant brands, says AdAge:
It sounds like the plot of a superhero story. On the hunt for an elusive target — young male consumers — media buyer Sharon Enright struggled to find the right ad venue for her client, Honda. A wrong move could mean money ill-spent. As it happens, Ms. Enright discovered a place largely untapped by the auto industry: comic books.
§ The New York Post (which is owned by Rupert Murdoch) reviews the anti-war GN SHOOTING WAR…and doesn’t like it!
But formally appropriate or not, a reader versed in classic comic book cartooning will be apt to find it distractingly ugly. The style often gets in the way of the simple storytelling virtues that cartooning is best for. It’s sometimes difficult to tell from panel to panel exactly what’s going on. The graphic novel’s look, created as the book flap says with “a combination of photography, vector illustration, and digital painting” is very now - the sort of “now” that will almost certainly look dated and oh-so-2007 soon enough.
In the book’s afterword, the authors identify this as a “work of political satire” that strives to “get you thinking about some big questions concerning the media, the war in Iraq and American foreign policy.” That was all-too-obvious in this heavy-handed, though successfully gripping, work. They add that, “We also hope it makes you chuckle.” Unless, say, the suitcase-nuking of Bangalore is a knee-slapper, they misunderstand their own work’s tone.
