Mets fans are gladdened by this news from the Onion: Struggling Mets Combine To Form Carlos Voltron:

Facing the Cubs in the midst of a three-game losing streak, the desperate Mets sprinted out to the field Tuesday, launched themselves high into the air above Shea Stadium, and combined their bodies to form a 400-foot tall fielding robot called Carlos Voltron.
Enlarge Image Mets Robot

According to eyewitnesses, before the Mets players completed the complicated procedure, in which they fused their physical selves and combined their talents to form the 20,000-ton robot, manager Jerry Manuel called the team to the dugout, where he commanded them to prepare their interlock systems for activation, connect the appropriate dyna-therms, charge up the infra-cells to full capacity, engage the mega-thrusters, and give it their best out there.

{Thanks to FMB for the link]

Well it’s official, as DC’s release makes clear:

Minx will cease publication beginning January ‘09. Minx was an experimental imprint for DC Comics and we are extremely proud of the books we published and the stories we told during the past two years. We thank all of the writers and artists who lent their talents to our endeavor and especially thank readers who came along for the ride. DC Comics remains committed to publishing diverse material for diverse audiences as we continue to welcome new readers.

Announced in November ‘06, after years of development, the Minx line launched in Spring ‘07 with THE PLAIN JANES by Cecil Castellucci; and Jim Rugg, RE-GIFTERS by Mike Carey, Sonny Liew and Marc Hempel, CLUBBING by Andi Watson and Josh Howard and CONFESSIONS OF A BLABBERMOUTH by Mike Carey, Louise Carey and Aaron Alexovich. Subsequent releases in ‘07 included GOOD AS LILY by Derek Kirk Kim and Jesse Hamm, and KIMMIE66 by Aaron Alexovich. This year, after a long break in new titles, we saw BURNOUT by Rebecca Donner and Inaki Miranda, the sequel JANES IN LOVE by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg, WATER BABY by Ross Campbell and THE NEW YORK FOUR by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly.

Still upcoming are TOKEN by Alisa Kwitney and Joëlle Jones, and EMIKO SUPERSTAR by Mariko Tamaki and Steve Rolston.

Other announced books for ‘09 include ALL NIGHTER by David Hahn, POSEUR by Deborah Vankin and Rick Mays and the sequel CLUBBING IN TOKYO by Watson and Grazia Lobaccaro. As of this writing, DC had no comment on the fate of these last three books.

After being launched with tremendous publicity, the line was also given a marketing budget of $125,000$250,000 to expose the books to the unfamiliar territory of teenage girls, in partnership with Alloy Media, a marketing firm. This included some events with Seventeen that are just breaking, even as the line has been cancelled:

Also this fall, with the help of SEVENTEEN magazine, MINX books will make appearances at two SEVENTEEN “Rock the Runway” Events going on at malls around the country, including: Lakeside Mall in Sterling Heights, Michigan on September 20th, 2008 and Neshaminy Mall in Bensalem, Pennsylvania on October 11th, 2008. Both events run from 2-4 pm.

Minx was also promoted as the back cover of Seventeen magazine. So clearly, some money was actually spent on the kind of marketing efforts that would attract attention to these books from the target audience.

Monday morning quarterback reports are springing up all over the web. Book retailer Shannon Smith has posted in many places with variations on the following:

As soon as the first boxes came in and I saw that the thin little books would be shelved in graphic novels I knew it was going to fail. The books are small YA format and are totally lost in the GN section. Plus, they just can’t compete with manga. I tired. I created endcaps for them but they were in the wrong part of the store. Could I have put them in YA? Sure. But it would have gone against the shelving code on the sticker and would have conflicted with the title look up computers so, no, not really an option. They might have had a chance if shelved with Gossip Girl and similar books in YA and that would not have taken marketing dollars. That would only have taken a phone call to Borders and N B&N to make happen. Just a call to say “hey, these books are YA so can you change your stickers to put this line of books in YA?”. It would not have taken a major marketing inititative on Random House’s part. Just a phone call. My advice to DC and all publishers is to vist a bookstore from time to time. Ask to talk to the shelvers. Ask to talk to the inventory managers. They know. They know where each book should be. They know which kinds of books the kids sitting on the floor in YA are reading and which kinds of books the kids sitting on the floor in manga are reading. Ask a bookseller. They won’t even charge you. (Yet.)

This interpretation falls in line with the “Random House” line of thinking — these books were YA titles, NOT Manga, and needed to be shelved in the YA section…but bookstores wouldn’t do it. Despite Smith’s it stretches creduility that that Random House wouldn’t make that phone call. But it still didn’t work for one reason or another.

Indeed, as I’ve speculated many times here, the Minx books seemed too be reaching an audience composed equally of male bloggers, and NOT teenage girls. Comments everywhere today back this up:
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Over at CBR, Andy Khouri reports that DC has canceled the Minx line, the much-talked-about line of GNs aimed at the female YA market, launched with much fanfare last year. Khouri’s story doesn’t go into detail on which books will be released, but it appears some will still come out, only not under the Minx imprint. Other books, including one already in the can, will not be published, but reversion to creators is under discussion.

We can’t say we’re entirely surprised, but the move seems to come down to the old problem of finding an audience, and the conclusions reached by those close to the situation are grim ones:

Developed over several years and backed with the full financial support of DC Comics parent Warner Bros., the MINX line and its many titles are generally well reviewed, and the imprint’s ambitious goal was met with optimism and support from direct market retailers. Nevertheless, CBR News was told that Random House, DC’s book trade distributor, has not been able to successfully place MINX titles in the coveted young adult sections of bookstores like Barnes & Noble.

Multiple sources close to the situation agree Bond and DC aren’t to blame for MINX’s cancellation, and that this development should be seen as a depressing indication that a market for alternative young adult comics does not exist in the capacity to support an initiative of this kind, if at all.

We keep hearing that Random House has a huge influence over DC’s plans in the bookstore market…it seems the Minx line has been the first victim of some pruning.

We’ll be weighing in with more thoughts later, but Valerie D’Orazio keys in on the marketing problems as well:

Were the Minx books “comics” or “books?” Where were they to be racked at the comic shop, and where were they to be racked in the book store? As of two weeks ago, I saw Minx titles kept in the “teen novel” section of Barnes and Noble — some distance, perhaps a whole floor or two, away from the graphic novel section. Would there be that crossover readership from the teen novel crowd? Would they open up that copy of Re-Gifters and be like “hey, cool” or would they be turned off?

UPDATE: We knew Dirk would have a field day with this, http://tcj.com/journalista/“>and he doen’t let us down.

DC seems to have gambled everything on the notion that the manga model of bookstore success could be duplicated: That if you threw Stuart Levy levels of money into a new market, you stood a good chance of grabbing Tokyopop’s magic. Unfortunately, Tokyopop’s “magic” amounted to the possession of the Sailor Moon line of books, which played on a groundswell of young television viewers who remembered the animated series fondly and were hungry for more, backed up by titles like CLAMP’s Cardcaptor Sakura to feed the demand for similar works. Minx simply didn’t have anything like that initial spark in their inventory, and thus the enormous amount of money thrown at the line became a millstone around its neck. Success needed to come quickly in order to justify the initial cash outlay, and Minx just couldn’t meet such ridiculously high expectations. This race required a tortoise, not a hare, but DC Comics foolishly bet everything on the hare. The result is yet another tombstone for the graveyard.

Shaenon Garrity continues to reprint manga from the 40s. This stuff is pre-Tezuka, and it shows, but it has much charm. This week:

Matt Thorn translates the title as The Delightful Steel Mill, which is probably the best translation, but I kind of prefer the translation one of my Japanese coworkers at Viz offered, The Happy Cog Factory. It appears to be a loosely-connected string of adventures had by the inhabitants of a cartoonist’s studio, mainly his Snowy-like talking dog and a pair of Mutt-and-Jeff-like cartoon characters who come to life.

Much more in the link.

FallCon is a nice regional show held each year in the Midwest — this year, it will be held October 4th and 5th at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, and to really get in the spirit of the thing, the mayor has even made a proclamation!

The honorable Christopher B. Coleman, Mayor of Saint Paul, Minnesota has issued a Mayorial Proclamation declaring “Now, Therefore, I, Christopher B. Coleman, Mayor of the City of Saint Paul, do hereby proclaim Saturday, October 4, 2008, to be: Midwest Comic Book Association Day in the City of St. Paul!”

Congrats to St. Paul for being a forward-looking city which has recognized the art form that is taking over the world.

§ Charlie Adlard (THE WALKING DEAD) writes to tell us he FINALLY has a website.

§ Similarly, Geppi’s Entertainment now has a new comprehensive website for all of his collectible-related endeavors.

§ Evie Nagy runs her full Q&A with Greg Rucka, mainly focusing on QUEEN & COUNTRY:

Do you go to any great lengths to reflect the realities of international intelligence, or do you sort of give yourself the liberty to look at the Queen & Country universe as largely fictional?

GR: I think the Q&C universe is tied very closely to this one, and for that reason I work very hard on the verisimilitude, I want it to feel as authentic as possible. I know just enough to make me potentially dangerous. But I think I’m very good at what I refer to as logical extrapolation—if A is true and B is true, then it is logical to me that C would also be the case. It’s the logic that I think carries forward. That’s always been how I’ve approached it. Just trying to take what I’ve been able to find in research and in talking to people, and I do a lot of reading—I read those big 800-page Metrokin archives, things that really only people with a sadistic streak would take the time to read. Either that or need a good book for self-defense.

§ George Gustines reviews AMERICAN WIDOW for the NYT:

The graphic novel “American Widow,” written by Alissa Torres and illustrated by Sungyoon Choi, is a memoir about the author; her husband, Luis Eduardo Torres; and his death on Sept. 11, 2001. That day is fraught with so many emotional and political landmines for countless people that a critic might hesitate to review such an account, especially if the work is less than stellar. Fortunately, “American Widow” is very good — largely because of the author’s willingness to address difficult issues, including her anger at her husband and her frustration in dealing with relief agencies that at times alternated between being overeager and counterproductive.

§ Steven Grant continues to muse on work-for-hire:

Again, don’t get me wrong. Work-for-hire is a vile concoction that has, as Joe Quesada so kindly (if unintentionally) pointed out, poisoned virtually every entertainment medium in existence. It’s an extension of the 19th century workhouse mentality, which holds that all benefits of labor and all ownership should accrue to the overseer, not the worker, as a condition of employment, and it’s basically the worker’s own damn fault if he lives in misery and squalor. That the man on top would be incapable of producing on his own what the laborer beneath him provides for him never enters the equation. (Which is not to suggest that, say, Joe Quesada, who’s an excellent artist and not bad writer couldn’t produce his own comic book, but he certainly couldn’t produce the entire Marvel line. I suspect most of his bosses are far less capable of carrying on were they suddenly in the position of having to produce the books themselves.)

But if work-for-hire were to vanish this afternoon, it wouldn’t visibly change the complexion of American comics.

§ Don’t forget Brian Cronin’s Month of Art Stars — some really good stuff here — we are blessed to live in a time of many wonderful talents, let’s not forget that.

§ Nikki Finke reports this year’s Oscar submitted film from Israel will be =the animated ‘Waltz With Bashir’.

§ Tucker Stone handicaps the Harvey Awards:

The Harvey Awards will be presented this weekend at the Baltimore Comic Convention. As a long introduction would bring a column already long enough past the breaking point, here’s where This Ship Is Totally Sinking gives you some predictions, as well as some hopes and fears on the upcoming ceremony. If you attend the awards, you’ll be able to watch the look of smug superiority appear on my face when I’m right, as well as witness my crushing disappointment for the moments when I’m proven wrong. You’ll also be a real freak, because staring at people you don’t know is just weird. But hey! That’s why you’re dressed like a gigantic plush doll!

§ Apparently, There will be a FATHOM movie after all, and it’s being made by Fox Atomic….hmmmmm.

According to the report from IESB — albeit from an unnamed source, so take all this with a grain of saltwater — “Fathom” is indeed still on at 20th Century Fox, however, the studio has decided to move the project to their genre film division, Fox Atomic. While the rumors of the film proceeding after many believed it to be canned is enough to get the internet humming, it’s trumped by the additional rumor that up-and-coming Hollywood super-hottie, Megan Fox, has agreed to sign on as the film’s lead role, Aspen Matthews.

Following in the tradition of Uncle Floyd and the ORIGINAL cast of Saturday Night Live, Spider-Man is teaming up with late-night personality Stephen Colbert:

Marvel is proud to reveal that Spider-Man and acclaimed television
personality Stephen Colbert will
join forces in an all new eight-page story featured in the extra-sized Amazing Spider-Man #573! Acclaimed writer
Mark Waid and fan favorite artist Patrick Olliffe present Stephen Colbert, a
candidate for the US Presidency in the Marvel Universe, teaming up with
Marvel’s most iconic crime fighter. What could bring these two together?
And what will it mean for both their futures? This issue also features a
special Colbert variant by Marvel EiC and industry superstar Joe Quesada! Plus,
don’t miss the stunning conclusion to the sold out “New Ways To
Die” from the dream team of Dan Slott & John Romita Jr!

Colbert has never been ashamed to show his nerdish streak, and previously teamed up with Marvel by having EiC Quesada as a guest on the show, and by “inheriting” Captain America’s shield after Cap’s “death.” He was also the subject of a much-delayed Tek Jansen comic for Oni, based on the egotistical pulp hero Colbert’s show occasionally features.

This week, Rich Johnston broke the story that part of the reason for the Fox lawsuit against the Warner WATCHMEN may be a rights swap of sorts:

Sources tell me that Fox want the 1960s Batman TV series. Currently Fox own the TV footage, but Warner Bros own the characters and trademarks, via their ownership of DC Comics. The rights to a DVD release have been held up for a long time now, and this case looks like it may be the instrument to release them.

Oh, Fox will get a wodge of cash as well - many millions of dollars it seems. But it seems they also want the rights to release the Adam West-starring Batman on DVD, something long denied fans of the series. And Warners will get the “Watchmen” film, to release as planned.

This kind of rights swap is not unheard of in studio history. For instance, Universal once swapped the rights to Oswald the Rabbit for sportscaster Al Michaels. However, this deal is not so simple.
TVShowsOnDVD explains that the rights to those long lost Batman TV episodes are tied up in more rights than you could possibly imagine:

Why? Because, as CBR notes, Fox owns the footage. That footage is theirs to release in any manner they see fit…as long as they obey all contractual language involving licenses, royalties and residuals. For the big-screen film which was in theaters in the ’60s, shortly after the first season (and which recently came out on Blu-ray), there had been language in the contracts that covered release of the footage in places other than a theater (on an airplane flight, for example). Language which could cover the home video releases that came along ages later…something that wasn’t imagined in the late ’60s! But for the television episodes, there was no such language in the contracts about showing the footage anywhere else besides on television. So Fox can’t show it anywhere else, such as on a DVD, because they don’t have any rights to do so. The contracts did have language, though, to cover licensing small clips out to other productions (which is why some short footage can show up on DVDs like Holy Batmania!, but not entire episodes).

Also, because the show had so many cameos based on other pop culture sensations of the time, the rights are incredibly convoluted.

Wow, this just gets juicier and juicier.
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Bluewater Productions sent out some PR yesterday about a new comic based on the life of Hillary Clinton — guess this political thing is so big even the comics are getting in on it. If we could we would just reproduce Kevin Melrose’s post at Blog@ Newsarama because he has a lot of fun with this story, from the typo-ridden release to the fact that the cover is a direct rip-off of IDW’s Obama and McCain comics.

“Too facetted”?

The comic, called Female Force: Hillary Clinton, features a woman on the cover who doesn’t much resemble the senator. At all.

Seriously, the Bluewater book even imitates the IDW poses. Come on, now! That’s not innovation we can live with.

§ Time Out New York scores an extremely rare interview with…Spider-Man, on the occasion of its 10th anniversary, as part of a series of interview with 40 important New Yorkers:

Who are your favorite New Yorkers?
Spider-Man: I love anyone who doesn’t publish incredibly slanted editorials in their newspaper about what a menace I am. I also like listening to Joe Benigno on WFAN; he’s the only guy I know who’s more of a lovable loser than me. Let’s go Mets!

What’s the biggest thing that’s happened to the city in the last 13 years?
Spider-Man: The ’05 transit strike. Sure, it was awful for you guys, but I was the first person into work every. single. day. That’s a big change for me.

Oh, wait I’m supposed to say Time Out magazine, right?

§ Nisha Gopalan discovers that Mark Millar thinks Sarah Palin is “Terrifying” and more in a chat at io9:

io9: The posters promoting War Heroes slam Obama, while the tone of the comic is, in kind, fervently patriotic. Is all of this satire or sincerity?
Millar: It’s amazing how many people seem to think this is a neo-con comic. Same thing happened on [Marvel’s] Ultimates, when it was clearly anti-war through and through. I feel like [director Paul] Verhoeven must have felt after Starship Troopers, in the sense that many people are missing the political satire. In my story, America is clearly engineering terror attacks as a means to garner control back home, enslave the population, and send kids with nothing to lose into the Gulf. It’s fake terror to justify an aggressive foreign policy.… There’s nothing duller than some worthy anti-war [commentary]. We know it’s wrong, illegal, and ill-considered. You don’t need me to tell you that. So I’m jumping one step ahead and planning a heist story of sorts in the middle of this bad situation.

ICv2 has a four-part interview with Gonzalo Ferreyra, Viz Media Vice President of Sales and Product Marketing, on many topics:

We’ve heard that there is more attention at both the consumer and trade level to the top manga titles while the middle and bottom titles are losing audience. Viz is blessed to have a lot of titles in that top tier, but between the various titles you offer, do you see that trend?

We’re not seeing it as much. It’s a question of expectation, and we’ve always been rather realistic about understanding the potential of that middle and bottom tier, so to speak. We’ve also done a little bit of housecleaning to manage the list and help us focus our list a bit more. But I wouldn’t say that we’re seeing a dramatic difference in the response to the long tail.

More: Part Two, Part Three, Part Four.

§ The New York Metro talks to novelist Jonathan Ames on THE ALCOHOLIC:

Was it therapeutic to be able to write about some of the ups and downs in your life?

It was good to write about some issues and events which I had not covered in my essays or novels. These were things that artistically I had wanted to address. One of my goals as a writer is to record what I’ve seen and felt - like a caveman scratching things onto a wall - and so in this sense certain parts of the book gave me an artistic catharsis. My other equally important goal is to give people something, to provide them with some entertainment and distraction.

§ Gopalan strikes again as Splash Page talks to an actual comic-book writer, Glenn Eichler on STUFFED:

“‘Stuffed’ has to do with father issues, brother issues, and the history of anthropology,” explained Eichler. But it really has to do with a dead body. His book (out in 2009 from First Second) is about a guy who inherits the contents of his late father’s “Ripley’s Believe It or Not”-type museum. Among the findings: a macaroni-noodle interpretation of “The Last Supper” and…a statue of loin-cloth-wearing, spear-wielding African man.

“It’s the corniest sort of ooga-booga native thing you could imagine,” says Eichler of the politically incorrect curio. “Then it slowly dawns on him—it’s not actually a statue, it’s stuffed human skin.”

Upon this discovery, his pothead half-brother (a.k.a. the disheveled guy in Bertozzi’s sneak peek) returns to town, and the siblings—who must contend with their father’s involvement in such an unsavory practice—disagree about what do with the creepy statue. The protagonist wants to hand it over to a natural-history museum; the hippie brother…doesn’t.

In a case of burying the lede a bit, Shadowline has announced a new online comics site, including PLATINUM GRIT by Trudy Cooper and Danny Murphy, and perhaps most interestingly, a new online home for FINDER (above), Carla Speed McNeil’s ongoing SF saga. The site presents the comics in a Flash-based format. PR below.

The digital comics revolution continues as Image Comics’ Shadowline expands their web comics division with a number of titles from fan favorites and the newest generation of creators!

“While my first love comes in the traditional comics format, there’s no denying the massive amount of new ideas and talent coming from the online world,” said Shadowline Publisher Jim Valentino. “It’s become a way for creators like PLATINUM GRIT’s Trudy Cooper to gain recognition or established names like FINDER’s Carla Speed McNeil to get their work to a wider audience. We’re thrilled to bring these creators together in one collective.”

Shadowline’s continued diversity will be reflected in the web comics, as the line will vary from the science fiction of FINDER to the political intrigue of Len Kody & Jenny Frison’s CHICAGO: 1968 and even the oft-kilter superheroics of ACTION, OHIO by Neil Kleid and Paul Salvi. The lineup also currently includes newer titles like HANNIBAL GOES TO ROME, and the long-running YENNY and BRAT-HALLA. Future contributions include the web comic hit, PLATINUM GRIT by Trudy Cooper and Danny Murphy, and the upcoming LI’L DEPRESSED BOY featuring art by Jim Mahfood, Sam Kieth and more to come!

More information can be found at www.shadowlinecomics.com/webcomics.

Virgin Comics is no more…but Liquid has risen in its place. Virgin’s management team has completed a buyout of Virgin’s assets that they have renamed Liquid Comics. The new entity will have an emphasis on digital content. Developing.

Liquid Comics has completed the management buyout of Virgin Comics led by the founding management team of Gotham Chopra, Sharad Devarajan and Suresh Seetharaman. Liquid Comics will continue to develop innovative digital, film, animation, and gaming projects for its original character, stories and other properties.

Commenting on the change, Sharad Devarajan said, “Virgin Group has been a fantastic partner with whom to work and together we have established a strong foundation of great character properties and media partnerships.
We remain fully committed to continuing our mission to provide a home for innovative creators and storytellers across the world.”

Virgin Group senior vice president of corporate development Dan Porter added, “The management team has a track record of great relationships with artists and media partners. Under this new ownership structure, the company is well positioned for future growth in the rapidly changing global comic space. As Virgin Group focuses on its core activities in North America, we wish them well in building their exciting business.”

Founded in 2005, Virgin Comics is a character entertainment company that has forged partnerships with Warner Brothers, New Regency, Sony Online Entertainment, Sci Fi Channel, Studio 18, UTV and others. Under the new Liquid Comics name, the management team plans to proceed with a number of the projects previously announced as Virgin Comics and will make announcements shortly regarding those projects and the restructured launch dates.

Everyone knows that global economic woes are eliminating things like gas-guzzling cars and rising prices have forced many changes in our daily lives, even as there’s been forced belt tightening in countless households. But now they’ve come for our candy. It seems that due to rising prices, Hershey has stopped putting cocoa butter in some of its products…forcing a change in labeling :

Products such as Whatchamacallit, Milk Duds, Mr. Goodbar and Krackel no longer have milk chocolate coatings, and Hershey’s Kissables are now labeled “chocolate candy” instead of “milk chocolate.”

What’s going on here? On Friday, TODAY consumer correspondent Janice Lieberman reported that Hershey’s has switched to less expensive ingredients in several of its products. In particular, cocoa butter — the ingredient famous for giving chocolate its creamy, melt-in-your-mouth texture — has been replaced with vegetable oil.

The removal of cocoa butter violates the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s definition of milk chocolate, so subtle changes have appeared on the labels of the Hershey’s products with altered recipes. Products once labeled “milk chocolate” now say “chocolate candy,” “made with chocolate” or “chocolatey.”

“Chocolatey.” “It’s chocolatey.” Can you imagine it??? Here at Stately Beat Manor, Krackel has long been one of our favorite treats, especially in those mini sizes so prevalent during the Halloween season. However, we will not — CAN not — condone this switch over to the waxy, vaguely chocolate-like substance that so many American candies have become. We know milk chocolate — or even better, dark chocolate — when we taste it, and if this is what it’s come to, we’ll just do like Charlie did, and only allow ourselves one anxious bite a day of the real thing–until it’s gone.

• Actress Mia Kirshner talks with Laura Hudson about I LIVE HERE.

• Van Jensen learns more of IDW’s G.I. Joe plans.

• AFRO SAMURAI makes is manga debut, Kai-Ming Cha reports.

• Peter Sanderson looks at Wacky Packages, Gary Gianni’s Prince Valiant and more.

• Brian Wood talks about his very busy 2008 with Wil Moss.

• An EXCLUSIVE 13-page excerpt from NOTHING NICE TO SAY.

If you’re not receiving PW’s free comics newsletter every week — you should be!

With DC’s recent run of pulpings, much attention has been placed on previous comics that were recalled and reprinted, including the infamous LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN #5, which was printed and then destroyed because it was discovered to have an ad for something called “Marvel Douche,” complete with a bizarro looking, er, turkey baster, in the back, and it was thought the ad was insulting to Marvel.

Why are we bringing this up? Because a lot of stories we’ve seen about this issue state, falsely, that Marvel Douche was a “made-up ad.” In fact, it was, as artist Kevin O’Neill puts it, a “100% genuine Victorian ad, not altered in any way.”

The Marvel Douche survived into the ’20s, as shown at the rather odd (but informative) website, The Museum of Menstruation, which even includes scans of an entire booklet on feminine hygiene, “The Marvel Way.”

So before you think that this is all too weird to be true, remember that women are always being encouraged to squirt strange things up their cooters. The Marvel Douche is but one page in a long tradition. Plus, who could possibly resist something called a “whirling spray”?

§ Douglas Wolk is interviewed at Comic Debrief:

Why are superheroes so prominent in the medium? Why not, say, pirates?

Superheroes ended up dominating pamphlet comic books as part of this gradual economic process over two decades. But superhero comics do two things really well. First, they’re really good at creating extended metaphors for things: the idea of human perfectibility, the idea of responsibility versus power. The Hulk is a story about the ways rage makes people less human and makes them into monsters, and that’s a metaphor you can just work and work and work — they’ve been working it for forty years. The other thing superhero comics do really well is create this gigantic fictional narrative that’s been going on for 70 years. There are two main narratives: a Marvel one and a D.C. one. So any comic you pick up is going to be part of this much, much bigger story that you can fit it into. In some ways, it’s like reading the newspaper every day and fitting it into the big picture, except that it’s fictional and exciting and there are these colorful things going on all the time. They’ve got a whole lot of clichés and tropes and things that are native to the genre that you’ve got to get used to in order to enjoy them, but they can be very enjoyable if you do.

§ Spidey is not the only cartoon-based character coming to Broadway–The Addams Family, based on the work of Charles Addams, is on the way.

The gestating show by composer-lyricist Andrew Lippa and book writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice — based on characters created by illustrator Charles Addams — had a rehearsed reading in August in Manhattan featuring Tony Award winners Bebe Neuwirth as Morticia and Nathan Lane as Gomez.

§ Although he’s getting a new trial, accused slayer Michael George is not getting bond:

After delaying the decision twice last week, Macomb Circuit Judge James Biernat Sr. on Tuesday denied bond for George, stating he would be a flight risk if he posted bond. He will remain in the Macomb County Jail.

Biernat said he considered the issue “very carefully.”

§ Area man pleads for local college to “Give graphic novels a chance”:

Completely unbeknownst to many people studying English and literature, a whole movement of autobiographical memoirs and original fiction has risen, though they are often overlooked for their “inherently juvenile” visual storytelling. Even now, books like Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis” and Alison Bechel’s “Fun Home” are being studied at Western, and this is a good step. But what we really need is a dedicated class.

§ Back issue tycoon Chuck Rozanski knows that he who controls the spice controls the universe:

In 1991, long before organic, sustainable and local became common culinary adjectives, Rozanski and his wife, Nanette Furman, moved their four daughters - Rowan, Aleta, Tanith and Elsbeth - to the 32-acre Jay Hill Farm just outside Boulder.

Their collective passion for organic gardening has blossomed into an enterprise that supplies restaurants, including Denver’s Z Cuisine, and customers at the Boulder County Farmers’ Market with everything from cinnamon basil and yellow chiles to salad greens and San Marzano tomatoes.

§ Joyous news! The Bratz will no longer be sold at Scholastic book fairs:

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, based in Boston, said that Scholastic’s move followed an 18-month fight to purge book club fliers that go home with students and are distributed at school book fairs of titles like “Lil’ Bratz: Dancin’ Divas” and “Lil’ Bratz: Catwalk Cuties.” Scholastic has also stopped offering spinoff products, like a Bratz computer game and designer stencil kit, in its book clubs and fairs.

Susan Linn, director of the campaign, said the group’s members had sent 5,000 e-mail messages to Scholastic protesting the highly sexualized images in the Bratz books and products. “When schools send these book club fliers home with children,” Ms. Linn said, “the message is that ‘We think these are fine and are good for your child.’ ”

We suppose we should be sad that another protest group has gotten material removed from wider circulation but…come on, it’s the Bratz.

Albrecht Dürer–cartoonist?

Puttering around here on various projects, like PW Comics Week, a general sense of sadness is overtaking us. Adding up today’s postings, it turns out that in Hollywood, messing with one detail of a beloved comic book classic is enough to give a director flop sweats; whereas removing the structures that made one of the most powerful, haunting and profound novels ever written in English powerful, haunting and profound, is dubbed “giving it that graphic novel sensibility.”

I do not think that word means what you think it does. And I think we’re in for a long haul.

[Above image: one of Rockwell Kent’s immortal illustrations for Moby Dick.]

Steve Bunche got a bunch of old comics collections from a neighbor and found some gems, including several Pogo books and a copy of BACKSTAGE FROM THE STRIPS. Unbelievably, the above strip is from 1970. Bunche explains.

But the main reason why I’m happy to have received BACKSTAGE AT THE STRIPS is that it contains a strip I never forgot since I first saw it in there three decades ago, namely the following unbelievable DENNIS THE MENACE daily from 1970, and not 1917.

Yes, this actually ran nationwide in 1970, which beggars the question of just how out of touch creator Hank Ketcham was. Were the 1960’s something that didn’t happen for him? Whatever the case, the Cleveland Press printed this apology the day after the strip ran, printing it in place of what would have been that day’s DENNIS THE MENACE installment:

Yesterday’s DENNIS THE MENACE cartoon offended a number of Press readers. The Press apologizes for the affront caused by the cartoonist. It assures subscribers that such a thing will not happen again.

What truly amazes me about it is that I don’t think Ketcham actually meant any harm and just didn’t know any better. DENNIS THE MENACE always kind of existed in a 1950’s-style, suburbia-that-never-was OZZIE AND HARRIET universe of bland (though very well drawn) blandness that was informed by generations of outdated humor, and the depiction of the kid as a Sambo stereotype was just a part of the once-accepted visual language. Too bad Ketcham apparently hadn’t payed attention to social advances and depictions of us “race” types since the mid-1940’s.

Prolific Italian comics legend Sergio Toppi is having an art show of his illustrations. The show opens this Saturday, 9/27, at Rome’s Tricromia gallery (Via di panico 35, Rome). The show is called “Città Sirena” (Mermaid City).

Mike Fiffe once again reaches into his vault for the conclusion of “Mutant Beach Party” and some Kyle Baker rarities from the DC vaults.

Gold and silver seals are now available for, respectively, Eisner-winning and -nominated books as a means of drawing attention to worthy books. Publishers should contact Jackie Estrada for more info.

Media veteran Greg Goldstein has joined IDW as Chief Operating Officer, according to a press release excerpted below:

“We are thrilled that Greg has joined our growing family,” said IDW CEO Ted Adams. “Greg’s demonstrated leadership capabilities and solid background in consumer entertainment publishing make him the ideal person to help guide us through the next phase of our growth. We are especially excited to leverage his entrepreneurial spirit, creative skills and extensive relationships in the entertainment industry.”

As COO, Goldstein will manage the company’s day-to-day operations, as well as help guide IDW as it expands its existing product lines and enters new categories.

(more…)

Variety announces that WANTED director Timur Bekmambetov will direct a new version of MOBY DICK , which wouldn’t in and of itself, be of that much interest to a comics blog, except that everyone connected with the movie seems to be rushing to tell Variety that this classic tale of man, marine mammal, vengeance, and destiny is actually almost as good a basis for a movie as a graphic novel!

The writers revere Melville’s original text, but their graphic novel-style version will change the structure. Gone is the first-person narration by the young seaman Ishmael, who observes how Ahab’s obsession with killing the great white whale overwhelms his good judgment as captain.

This change will allow them to depict the whale’s decimation of other ships prior to its encounter with Ahab’s Pequod, and Ahab will be depicted more as a charismatic leader than a brooding obsessive. [snip]

“We wanted to take a graphic novel sensibility to a classic narrative,” said Collage.

Ah yes…that much prized “graphic novel sensibility.” Are the writers unaware that Bill Sienkiewicz already turned Moby Dick into a graphic novel?

…and one that looked pretty damn cool.

Technorati Tags: Herman Melville

• Flog reports that “Low Moon,” Jason’s comic strip for the NY Times Magazine, will be collected next year.

• ICv2 talks to the ComicMix folks about the GNs they are selling at Baltimore, but learns that it is something of an “test printing” and the motives behind and future of the plan are no clearer than Sarah Palin’s definition of a molecule:

ComicMix would not disclose any further publishing plans. “We’re not ruling out doing other books or even other editions of these books for other shows but we have no plans to do that right now,” the spokesperson said. “Otherwise, I’m not authorized to talk about our book publishing plans.”

• And…congrats to Wil Moss, who just started this week at DC Comics as an assistant editor. Wil has been one of our fine writers for PW Comics Week for a couple of years now, and while we’re heartbroken to see him move on, we’re sure his talent will take him far.

Technorati Tags: Jason

DJ Caruso’s press tour for EAGLE EYE means everyone gets to ask him about his proposed Y: THE LAST MAN movie, and he just keeps talking., This time he tells Geoff Boucher yet again why Shia LeBeouf is perfect and how he will — gasp!! — CHANGE the much-beloved story:

“Yes, that’s true, you have the creator and you want to be very true to the material but the good news is when we presented it to him he thought it was great. I’ve never been involved in a project that has so much fanboy chatter. I get e-mailed a lot of opinion about what I’m doing. There’s been talk out there already of Shia being in the movie and there’s a lot of positive feedback but there’s also these naysayers. There’s a few people who say that I’m the right director and others say I’m not the right filmmaker. At least they’re all talking about it. With ‘Salton Sea,’ in one review I’d be a genius and then somebody else like [Los Angeles Times movie critic] Kenneth Turan would say I’m an idiot or whatever. But since then, you know, I don’t really read the reviews. Because it doesn’t matter and if you do read them you’ll just drive yourself crazy. I don’t mind things that are critical but when they’re cynical or angry, I don’t have time for that.”