Or, if you prefer, Magneto and Professor X do Beckett.
According to a story on the BBC website, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart will be doing WAITING FOR GODOT next year.
McKellan will play Estragon and Stewart will play Vladimir.
Stewart is currently playing Claudius in the RSC production of Hamlet starring soon-to-be-ex Doctor # 10, David Tennant.
No word if Hugh Jackman might play Pozzo or Lucky.
Posted by Mark Coale
Literary Halloween Party tonight! Stuart Moore has more and a preview at his blog.
As a special Halloween treat, we’d like to offer a COMPLETE story from Osamu Tezuka’s BLACK JACK Volume 1, “Teratoid Cystoma.” Black Jack is the world’s greatest surgeon but he’s also a dropout from society, giving him a “have scalpel, will travel” lifestyle. A brooding loner worthy of a Cure song, Black Jack faces humanity’s most appalling problems — some medical, some fantastic — but he also reflects Tezuka’s concerns with humanism in the face of evil.
As many know, “Doc” Tezuka went to medical school before becoming one of the world’s most influential artists and animators and was, in fact, a licensed doctor. Although the stories in BLACK JACK aren’t always “realistic” in the most obvious sense, the stories, and especially the detailed medical illustrations, have a great deal of realism.
In the present story, Black Jack is called in to remove a giant tumor from a woman…a tumor with….personality.
Thanks to Steve Vrattos and all at Vertical for arranging this preview. You can buy the entire BLACK JACK Volume 1 at Amazon. Volume 2 is due out November 18th.
REMINDER: read pages right to left!
CAM Alternative Press Expo Party:
Keith Knight Closing Reception
and Book Release Party for Jesse Reklaw, Hellen Jo and Olga Volozova
Cartoon Art Museum Event: Saturday, November 1, 2008, 8:00-11:00 pm
Sliding Scale: $2 - $20
The Cartoon Art Museum, Dark Horse Comics and Sparkplug Comic Books proudly present The Cartoon Art Museum’s Alternative Press Expo Party on Saturday, November 1, 2008. Join special guest Keith Knight as we host the closing reception for The Knight Life: Bay Area Spotlight on Keith Knight. Additional guests include Jesse Reklaw, celebrating the release of The Night of Your Life, published by Dark Horse Comics, collecting the Ignatz Award-nominated webcomic Slow Wave; Trevor Alixopolous, creator of the Ignatz Award-nominated graphic novel The Hot Breath of War; Hellen Jo; Olga Volozova, David King and Julia Wertz. Hellen Jo and Olga Volozova will be signing copies of their own newly-released graphic novels, published by Sparkplug Comic Books.
All of the aforementioned artists will be reading selections from their comics, as well as signing copies of their new books and selling limited edition prints and posters. Food and beverages for the event will be sponsored by Dark Horse, Sparkplug and a wide selection of local restaurants and merchants. Please visit our website the week prior to the Alternative Press Expo for a complete list of party sponsors and special events.
Okay, buckle your seat belt, and BE SURE TO READ AFTER THE CUT!
§ Buenaventura Press:
Buenaventura Press will have a 5 table sprawl at APE this year. You can find us at tables 308 - 312. We will be debuting Kramers Ergot 7 with a limited handful of advance copies that have been specially flown in for the event. There will be continuous signings throughout the weekend, with numerous artists signing Kramers Ergot 7. In addition, Phil Elverum will be signing advance copies of his new book Dawn, Matt Furie will be signing Boy’s Club 1 & 2, Kevin Huizenga will be signing Fight Or Run, and Lisa Hanawalt will be signing her awesome mini comics. There will be a Kramers Ergot discussion panel on Sunday, Nov 2nd from 2:30 - 3:45 with editor Sammy Harkham, publisher Alvin Buenaventura, and participating artists Daniel Clowes, Eric Haven, Jaime Hernandez, Kevin Huizenga, Ted May, Johnny Ryan, Chris Ware, and others. Eric Reynolds will moderate.
Plus…PARTY!
§ Fantagraphics signing schedule
§ Top Shelf’s plans:
TOP SHELF GOES APE!
Heading to Alternative Press Expo this weekend? Top Shelf’s West Coast dream team, Leigh Walton and Brett Warnock, will be at tables 320-322 all weekend, together with the following creators:
-
-Jeffrey Brown (SULK #1, starring Bighead & Friends!)
–Renee French (THE TICKING, MICROGRAPHICA)
–Robert Goodin (THE MAN WHO LOVED BREASTS)
–Liz Prince (DELAYED REPLAYS)
–Bill Kelter and Wayne Shellabarger (VEEPS: PROFILES IN INSIGNIFICANCE)
–Nate Powell (SWALLOW ME WHOLE)
And don’t forget to come by Isotope on Saturday night for Top Shelf Happy Hour at 8pm, leading into the Isotope Award for Minicomics! Brett Warnock will be shaking up the tasty drinks, while Nate Powell rocks a live art jam with Joshua W. Cotter! You can’t miss it!
§ Kiel Phegley remembers My Life In Halloween Costumes.
§ Greg Burgas wonders…What’s next for DC?
Bear with me: Final Crisis is ending. DC is publishing what amounts to a month of books that regular readers can skip with impunity (which I plan to do, as none of the books interest me at all). Everyone assumes the God of All Comics will somehow show the heroes winning against Darkseid by shooting the Atom into his brain (wait, he wouldn’t do that again, would he?). But what if we’re wrong? What if G-Mozz does the (relatively) unthinkable and has Darkseid win completely? What if the Anti-Life Equation simply destroys the DC Universe? This is FINAL Crisis, after all. And as DiDio has sold a portion of his soul to the Mozzer (the other portion he saved for Geoff Johns, presumably, although Winick may have gotten a piece), why wouldn’t he let him do whatever he wanted, including destroy everything?
§ Brian Heater has a brief interview with Keith Knight on the recent controversy over one of his strips:
But there were some really nice ones, too. There was a kid who wrote to me who was the sports editor of the paper, and he said that he wanted to quit when he first saw the strip. He was shocked. But there was a professor who brought up what he thought I was trying to say about it. There was this very uniquely American situation, where there are these folks who are so casual with their racism, but they’re still supporting this guy. The juxtaposition of that is weird and strange and only in America.
§ Hollywood corner: This interview with Guy Ritchie shows he’s another one with “that certain sensibility”:
“I suppose that the characters that I’m interested in are almost caricatures to a degree,” he said. “I’m interested in the comic book notion on celluloid, and I suppose if you delineate your characters to an extreme, then what you end up with is a three-dimensional character. But I think you have to commit, you have to be confident that that character is a stand-alone individual, and you could make a narrative solely based on that character.”
LCD Soundsystem remix via Sean Collins:
Every great book by Jack Kirby.
All the underground hits.
All of the Boody Rogers strips.
I heard you have a hardcover of every Tintin album on Belgian import.
I heard that you have a mini of every seminal Bill Sienkiewicz book - 1985, ‘86, ‘87.
I heard that you have a TPB compilation of every good ’60s strip and another HC from the ’70s.
I hear you’re buying a P.O. Box and a Kinko’s card and throwing your Diamond deal out the window because you want to make something real.
You want to make a King-Cat comic.
(Stolen from Douglas)
Activity page: What is wrong with this press release?
Based on the old Sci-fi Classic film, This January Bluewater Productions updates this classic in conjunction with Legend Films. Written by Jason Schultz and Darren G. Davis and penciled by John Polacek.
The film and comic series is described as, Lunar She-Devils lure Earthmen into their lair of doom! This is the one, the remake of the century, based on the legendary sci-fi thriller, “Cat-Women of the Moon.” On the first expedition to the moon, a race of sexy moon maidens living in a hidden lunar world capture astronauts for their “pleasure.” SEE the return of the giant hairy spider puppet as it lusts after female victims! SEE terrifying rock creature’s attack! SEE the unbelievable Atomic Rocketship make the fantastic journey through meteor-infested space lanes! SEE the “not-so-special” special effects in this cosmic entertainment catastrophe! Bizarre, fascinating, surreal and greatly entertaining, “Missile to the Moon” must be seen to be believed!
We know it is wrong to steal pictures from Facebook, but this photo from Tim Leong’s photo gallery from the event sheds much light on our previous karaoke woes. It also elicited this response from one Chip Zdarsky:
It’s weird that by simply looking at a photo of people singing I can tell that it sounds terrible.
In our defense, we’d like to note that this photo does much to prove the little-known “photo tracing” charge against both Eiichiro Oda and Akira Toriyama.
Just in time for Halloween, Rabid Rabbit is hosting a Horrific Happy Hour this Thursday(!) in celebration of our newest issue: “The Horror of Rabid Rabbit: Oh, The Horrifying Horror!” Please join us, once again, for a few hours of Murderously Malevolent Merry-making, Demonically Dreadful Debauchery and Ghoulishly Good times at Beauty Bar (see attachment):
Beauty Bar
231 East 14th Street, btw 2nd & 3rd Ave
THURSDAY(!), OCTOBER 30th; 7-10pm
We’ve rented out the back room only until 10 (don’t be late!) and will be running a happy hour special, as well as giving away copies to costumed revelers(!). And for those unfamiliar with Beauty Bar, they have a fully licensed professional manicurist giving manicures for $10 + Free Drink.
Feel free to bring friends, and we hope to see you there!
Party invite penciled and colored by by C. M. Butzer (editor and author of the HarperCollins’ December release, GETTYSBURG: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL) and inked by Sungyoon Choi (illustrator of AMERICAN WIDOW).
Much more at the Pumpkin Gutter site.
[Link via my mom.]
New Yorkers are in for a real treat tonight as Kim Deitch does a special showing of toons from his vault:
Kim Deitch will host a Cartoon Movie Night featuring rarely seen animated cartoons from the 1920s and 1930s hand-picked for the occasion from Deitch’s own personal collection. This period of animation inspired Deitch’s signature character Waldo the Cat and is the subject of his acclaimed graphic novel The Boulevard of Broken Dreams, which is featured in the exhibit. As a special Halloween treat, MoCCA will also display for one night only selected specimens from Deitch and spouse Pam Butler’s extensive collection of antique toy cats. The blurring of fact, fiction and autobiography in Deitch’s work is a major focus of Kim Deitch: A Retrospective, and this display will present a rare opportunity to see the historical artifacts that motivate the fictional narrative in Deitch’s graphic novel Alias the Cat.
Deitch’s collection is reportedly vast and mind-boggling and, YouTube be damned, we’d rather watch this in a convivial setting with friends and pals.
More: NPR interviews Deitch.
We were surprised no one had mentioned that this week’s New Yorker is the annual Cartoon issue, but Chris Mautner has a nice rundown of its contents. The item of interest to most (and one that is not online) is a four-page strip by Robert, Aline, and Sophie Crumb, but among the Internet-accessible features, this quiz attempting to analyze especially inscrutable cartoons may be the most valuable:
(a) The cowboy just realized the terrible faux pas he made earlier by calling the Native Americans “Indians.”
(b) The cowboys’ enemies are lighting the arrows in order to burn down the nearby rocks and cactus.
(c) The enemies are lighting their arrows, but, for the cartoon to make sense, the men should have been in a fort or some other structure that can actually burn down.
(d) These cowboys are spying on Native Americans who are attacking some other cowboys, in a faraway fort.
Have you ever wanted to meet the artist of WATCHMEN? Tonight could be your chance:
Midtown Comics in New York City is proud to announce a signing event with acclaimed comic book artist Dave Gibbons, to celebrate the release of his new retrospective work, Watching the Watchmen, from Titan Books.
In 1986, Mr. Gibbons collaborated with Alan Moore on the ground breaking 12 issue comic book mini-series Watchmen, now the #1 best-selling graphic novel, and the only one to appear on Time Magazine’s list of 100 Best English-Language Novels since 1923. In his own words, Mr. Gibbons created the Watchmen characters from “the descriptions that Alan had provided,” to come up with “a classic superhero feel, but a little bit stranger… a sort of operatic look… an Egyptian kind of a look.”
A comic strip by African-American cartoonist Keith Knight that used the N-word has caused an apology at Montclair State University. The episode of Knight’s syndicated weekly comic, The K Chronicles, adapted a real-life incident that used the racial epithet in relation to Barack Obama. The appearance of the strip in the school paper upset readers.
Angry students have complained to the university’s dean of students, other campus officials and the editors since the strip ran Thursday in The Montclarion, which has a circulation of about 4,000.
“My heart just dropped when I read it,” said Tamar VanDerVeer, 21, a senior who serves as secretary of the Organization of Students for African Unity, a campus group. “I’m trying to find something positive in the situation, but being a senior at Montclair State, a very diverse school, the ignorance is really uncalled for. They really hurt us.”
Knight issued a statement about the incident at his blog, which reads in part:
Is it offensive? Yes. Is it sad? Sure. But that’s the reality of the United States and this very unique election.
We have the first African-American candidate for president who could actually win. And folks of all colors are coming face-to-face with bias and race issues they didn’t know about, have ignored or pretended didn’t exist. Neighbors, co-workers, and family members are learning a little more about the society we live in.
The comic is pointing out one aspect of it. Straight-up racists are prepared to pull the lever for a black man. While some folks out there, who never thought they were prejudiced, aren’t going to vote for him because of his skin color.
Should we ignore stuff like this? I don’t think so.
Should it be in a comic strip. Yes!!
Nevertheless, Bobby Melok, the editor of the paper, issued an apology, explaining that since the strip came through a cartoon syndicate, it hadn’t been checked for content.
“Many of you have voiced your displeasure with this cartoon, as is your right,” Melok wrote. “It is never The Montclarion’s intention to offend its readership, and we sincerely apologize to all who were upset with this comic.”
Read the strip for yourself in the first link.
Once you start digging a bit into Japanese culture, you often come across reports that there are a lot of single people in Japan. According to one survey, 1 in 4 Japanese men between 30-34 is a virgin. The situation isn’t much better for the girls, where 1 in 4 has not had sex for a year, according to another survey. It comes as little surprise, then, that one manga fan is seeking to legalize marriage between humans and cartoon characters. And he’s got support.
Taichi Takashita launched an online petition aiming for one million signatures to present to the government to establish a law on marriages with cartoon characters.
Within a week he has gathered more than 1000 signatures through.
“I am no longer interested in three dimensions. I would even like to become a resident of the two-dimensional world,” he wrote.
“However, that seems impossible with present-day technology. Therefore, at the very least, would it be possible to legally authorise marriage with a two-dimensional character?”
Takashita is not available for comment, leading some to believe he may be kidding around. If he is pulling a prank, he’s also breaking the hearts of some lonely people. “For a long time I have only been able to fall in love with two-dimensional people and currently I have someone I really love,” one person wrote. on the petition. “Even if she is fictional, it is still loving someone.”
The above link mentions another reader who may have taken manga fandom a bit too far: a woman who posted online that she wanted her parents killed for making her throw away her three-room manga collection.
(Above: Googled with amazing ease via Love Hina.)
Last week’s lively debate at Comics Comics over the merits of David Heatley’s MY BRAIN IS HANGING UPSIDE DOWN has drawn a point-by-point response from Heatley himself.
First off, I’m really proud of this book. I spent almost five years on it. It’s not perfect by any stretch and I’m sure it will be a maddening read for some people, but it’s my baby and I stand behind it. I think of it as a catalog or a ledger accounting book. It’s an inventory of my life. It doesn’t have a traditional novelistic arc to it. It doesn’t follow the rules of usual literature and might not look like your run-of-the-mill comic book.
My Brain is a series of fractured vignettes that approximate a self-portrait, clearly incomplete— a record of who I was and what mattered to me most while writing it. More than that, it’s the best way I know to talk about my country. There’s an amazing amount of personal and cultural baggage I was bombarded with as a kid and teenager and it’s my job to sort it out and make sense of it and decide what’s worth keeping (and passing on). The risk I took was in betting that readers would find that process entertaining or moving or helpful in some way. It seems the jury’s still out, over here at least.
The rebuttal to the rebuttal continues in the comments.
Related: Heatley relates other reactions to his book in a comic strip at Amazon, excerpted above.
§ Must read! The Boston Globe interviews Rick Keene, whose job it is to clean up old comics for those expensive archive editions.
His ingenuity at the computer has made it possible to bring back stories once “considered ‘lost,’ ” said John Clark, editor-in-chief for Gemstone Publishing’s Disney comic books, which Keene also restores. The comics, originally printed on newspaper letterpresses, “were smudgy and out of register, so any attempts to make them reprintable were cost-prohibitive,” Clark wrote in an e-mail. Keene estimates he has restored 11,000 DC pages and 800 Disney pages. They often come in faded and tattered. Occasionally, he has to recreate dialogue or make an educated guess, say, as to whether the missing wrist in a torn panel had been wearing a watch.
§ The Daily Cross Hatch chats with Jesse Reklaw:
“I don’t think different planes of reality can be accessed in a comic, but I have had epiphanies from comics, just as from film and literature. Jim Woodring, Daniel Clowes, and Gilbert Hernandez have all changed my mind about reality through their comics.”
§ One-man cage match interview! This interview with Jim Shooter reads very much like what it is: a talk with a man who was once the most powerful guy in comics looking back at an attempt to be just another cog in the machine, specifically, a run on LEGION OF SUPERHEROES that didn’t go too well, as Shooter and DC did not see eye to eye:
“I think it had more to do with their being pissed at me for complaining too much and too loudly – to DC people only, not to the media – about various glitches and screw-ups than anything else. DC has incentives for licensing of new characters. Super Lad could, potentially be the new Superxxx, and very licensable. Why reward a pain in the ass like me with extra money? They actually fired me at one point for complaining too enthusiastically about a really aggravating snafu. I groveled enough to get my gig back – I have child support to pay – but they took Super Lad away. Then they canceled the book.”
But then, as the lights dim and the liquid in the bottle of whiskey gets lower, Shooter looks himself in the eye:
“But let’s focus on the real culprit – me. I guess what it really all comes down to is that my work wasn’t good enough to overcome all the small problems further down the line. If you’re out at first base, it doesn’t matter if you slide in at second.”
§ Likewise, Johanna Draper Carlson interviews always candid Alex de Campi, and gets a lot of dirt on Tokyopop:
Here it is: Tokyopop always felt like it was flailing around with no sense of purpose or long-term strategy, and they would spin out these silly jelly-at-the-wall ideas on a regular basis rather than just knuckle down and focus on great stories, well-marketed. When they launched Manga Readers or whatever that little format was called, they were all “we will get this in the YA section of bookstores!” Um, did they? Did they heck. They also didn’t follow up with any marketing outside the comics world. I remember speaking to one of their marketing people and going, hey, have we tried to get this reviewed in some newspapers’ kids book sections? Can you show me what reviews you’ve managed to get for the book? And they were completely flummoxed. They ummed and ahhed and then asked me if I wanted a free pass to Bristol Comic Con in the UK as if it were a big deal.
§ Percy Carey continues his interviews at Complex magazine with Steve Niles:
Percy Carey: Can you tell the readers about your graphic novel The Lost Ones with Zune? And what inspired you to create the character Dr. Revolt? Steve Niles: I was hired by a pal of mine to create a book that would reflect the “spirit” of Zune. No product pushing, so I was in. I tried to create a story that four artists could each take a role in, sort of like a relay race. I love what the artists did. It’s one of the more unusual books I’ve done, and not horror, which is a nice change of pace for me.
§ Tucker Stone confesses a shameful secret:
But if you take a magnifying glass—which, since it’s my ego-fulfilling fantasy, you would never get the chance to do—then you’re going to notice one glaring statement on my character as, not just a human being, but an Arrogant Comic Book Pundit.[1] With the power of that magnifying glass (or monocle, if you’re so inclined, Mr. Foyle) you’re going to notice that there’s a trade paperback that doesn’t look like any of the others, and that’s because it looks like my copy has gone through a tire-fire before being shoved down the pants of a marathon runner at the first mile marker. It’s a comic that has been, for lack of a better or more accurate term, made sweet love to. It’s a comic that’s been read, re-read, loaned out, and then read again. On top of that, it’s not even in the Comics Journal “Best 100 Comics of the Century.” Even worse: it’s a super-hero comic.
Three spooky options to announce this morning, one kid-friendly, two…very, very NOT kid-friendly.
¶ Paramount has snapped up the rights to Dave Roman’s AGNES QUILL. The book, illustrated by artists including Jason Ho, Jeff Zornow and Raina Telgemeier, has Thor Freudenthal (”Hotel for Dogs”) attached to direct, and Evan Spiliotopoulos on script. The book is the tales of a teenaged girl who inherits unearthly powers.
¶ Next up, HELLRAISER! Just in time for Halloween, French helmer Pascal Laugier, whose film, MARTYRS, shocked Gallic audiences with its horrific violence, has signed on to remake Clive Barker’s horror classic. The phrase “not for the squeamish” comes to mind.
ICM-repped Laugier at least seems to have thematic sympathies with the material, with his “Martyrs” beginning as a revenge movie then entering the grounds of spiritual horror, with torture figuring as a focal point. Torture — though not the so-called horror subgenre of torture porn — also is a key point in “Hellraiser.”
“This is a dream project for me,” Laugier said. “I know Clive Barker’s work very well, and I would never betray what he has done. Fans are expecting a definitive ‘Hellraiser,’ and I don’t want to take that away from them.”
¶ FInally, the news you have been waiting for: PREACHER is alive as a feature film, with Oscar®-winner Sam Mendes attached. You’ll recall that the ultra-violent, ultra-sacrilegious book by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon was in the works as a TV series at HBO for a while until execs realized just what they were dealing with. You’ll recall that Mendes already directed ONE comic book movie — the Oscar®-nominated ROAD TO PERDITION — so he’s no stranger to panels and whatnot.
Faithful reader Skro pointed us towards this piece by Don Marquez, who’s the regular cover artist on ALIEN PIG FARM 3000 among other things.
In news that could probably best be described as a “when, not if” story, David Tennant announced that he will be leaving DR WHO after the last of the TV specials scheduled for 2009 and 2010.
Numerous websites have speculated on who Doctor # 11 will be, including Rich’s rumor about Patterson Joseph. Just who new executive producer Steven Moffat will tab is probably quite a while away from being announced, but that won’t stop message boards around the world from throwing out crazy suggestions.
Hey, since they didn’t pick him to be James Bond, how about Beat favorite Clive Owen as the Doctor? That would likely go a long way to keeping the female viewership that Tennant brought to the venerable BBC program.
Posted by Mark Coale
More big doin’s! Tonight at Jim Hanley’s, Stuart Moore, Joe Harris and the legendary Bill Sienkiewicz sign for Thomas Ligotti’s THE NIGHTMARE FACTORY Volume 2, which was assembled by your humble narrator. The NMF crew signs from 6-8. Stick around for Garth Ennis and Russell Braun from 8-10. Stuart has more info at his blog .
PLUS: THIS FRIDAY! One of the most fun events of the year! McNally Robinson’s Literary Halloween party: Or as Stuart puts it:
Friday, October 31st, 6:30 onward: McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince Street between Lafayette and Mulberry. This signing is part of McNally Jackson’s Literary Halloween Party, which features costumes, drinks, signings, and lots of readings. I might even read a selection from an upcoming novel myself. I did this last year with Colleen Doran, for Nightmare Factory Volume 1, and it was an amazingly great way to spend Halloween…sitting, drinking beer, signing books, looking at costumes and listening to scary stories. McNally Jackson is one of the few good-sized indy bookstores left in New York City, with a great selection and really nice staff.
This was a total blast last year, and you will not want to miss it this time out.
So come on out and check out NIGHTMARE FACTORY Vol. 2 if you haven’t already. I’m very, very proud of the book, and it features fantastic work by Bill, Stuart, Joe and artists Toby Cypress, Nick Stakal and Vasilos Lolos. If you like psychological terror and existential nightmares, this is the book for you.
Big doins all over the place this week, including Robert Kirkman at Forbidden Planet. Ask him about creator’s rights or visit him on the web.
Marvel’s playing a game again! My guesses:
a) Abe Vigoda
b) General Douglas MacArthur
c) Woodgod
§ In a very nice “rest of the story” note, we learn that last year’s big brouhaha — the case of Nathan Fisher, a high school teacher fired for giving a student a copy of EIGHTBALL to read — has a happy ending for Fisher, as he’s got a new teaching job:
“It feels like a family,'’ he said when I saw him at Coginchaug on Tuesday morning where I was speaking to students. “It’s like they say. It’s the hardest job you will ever love.”
Fisher is teaching English and journalism and also oversees the school’s online newspaper, the Devil’s Advocate.
§ ICv2 catches up with Kurt Hassler onthe state of Yen Press:
Will this reorganization result in any change in the trade dress of Yen Press titles—i.e. the addition of an Orbit symbol, etc.?
As stated in the press release, Yen Press will continue to develop as an independent imprint. It’s worth pointing out that this is an internal organizational change more than anything and should at a consumer level be largely invisible. The trade dress of Yen’s titles will remain unchanged. The Orbit logo will not be added to Yen titles.
§ Scott Edelman and Irene Vartanoff visit with artist Marie Severin, who suffered a severe stroke earlier this year, but is, thankfully, in high spirits:
After touring Marie’s new apartment and catching up, we spirited her away for lunch at a nearby diner (which is where you see us above), followed by ice cream sundaes at Carvel, after which we returned to her place for yet more gossiping and a leisurely walk in the sunshine along the paths around her building. Marie was her usual crazy self, her spirit undiminished by last year’s stroke and her sense of humor still intact, leaving our stomachs aching from laughter.
§ Jillian Tamaki is wild about CAT-EYED BOY, as all discerning souls should be.
This is some seriously freaky shit, people. Buy it now. It’s so exciting and thrilling… I mean, when’s the last time you read something and exclaimed “OH MY GOD!” aloud? It reminded me of being a kid and being absolutely titillated to read about sex or violence in a book… you can hardly believe someone has printed this! And you’re READING it!
§ Peanuts power: Cartoonist Charles Schulz is #2 on the top earning dead celebrity list, with $33 million. Elvis is #1 and Heath Ledgeris #3.
§ The Hollywood Reporter has a long look at the current job duties of “Showrunners”, the front man (or, occasionally, woman) for your favorite TV shows. Such duties increasingly include running the comic book offshoots of said shows:
“Shows need to exist on multiple platforms in order to survive,” Kring says. “You have to have a face on the Internet and various platforms, iTunes or Hulu. We have publishing and merchandising and comic books and online content. It’s a much bigger playing field than just quietly putting your show on the air each week.”
With their profiles raised, the showrunner is now beholden to various shareholders, giving media interviews and taking meetings with underlings in addition to the usual writing-producing tasks.
§ We recall Kevin Somers as a very nice guy when he was a very talented artist, but he has gone over to the dark side:
Kevin Somers, who has done illustrations for test preparation materials and comic books, said he was considering applying to the I.R.S. because the agency had been so nice when his freelance work dried up a few years back and he fell behind on his taxes. “The idea of the I.R.S. being ominous and threatening got turned around in my mind,” he said. “I see the I.R.S. as a way to help people.”
§ Cartoon types, including P. Bagge, discuss Alan Greenspan.
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