Okay! Finally some good news! IDW is planning to add Alex Raymond’s gorgeous Rip Kirby to its deluxe comic strip reprint series, with the first Dean Mullaney-edited volume due in September:

Following the Eisner-award winning Terry and the Pirates, IDW’s Library of American Comics will present Alex Raymond’s modernist classic Rip Kirby in a definitive five-volume archival hardcover series.

Edited and designed by Dean Mullaney, Rip Kirby will contain every daily from the strip’s inception in 1946 through Alex Raymond’s tragic death in 1956. “It’s going to look gorgeous,” Mullaney says. “We are reproducing the strips from pristine syndicate proofs that will allow readers to see, for the first time, the full luxurious detail of Raymond’s brushwork.”

Rip Kirby was the first hip and cool detective in newspaper comics. Created by Alex Raymond when he was deactivated from the Marines after World War II, it was a fresh approach to the genre, a departure from the prevailing hard-boiled style of detective fiction. Rip Kirby was urbane and cerebral, and used scientific methods as often as he used his fists when solving crimes and mysteries. But there was still plenty of action — Kirby was an All-American athlete and decorated war hero.

Co-written with Ward Greene, Rip Kirby often addressed contemporary issues, including trafficking in black market babies and the attempt to limit the proliferation of atomic and biological weapons. The supporting cast was comprised of Rip’s valet and assistant, Desmond, and plenty of breathtaking women, particularly Rip’s girlfriend, Honey Dorian, and the raven-haired and aptly-named Pagan Lee. Highly conscious of the fashions of the day, Raymond brought post-war and early-50s chic and fashion to the comics page, dressing his female characters in ultra-chic clothes obviously inspired by Dior’s “New Look.”

The strip also signified a grand departure, both thematically and artistically, from Raymond’s first major creation, Flash Gordon. With Rip Kirby, Raymond wedded his incomparable brushwork to a sweeping approach to storytelling and camera movement that was missing in the more static Flash. He promulgated a new art style — one of cinematic photo-realism — that influenced such artists to follow as Stan Drake, Leonard Starr, Al Williamson, and Neal Adams.

Biographical and historic essays will be written by Brian Walker, author of the best-selling Comics Before 1945 and Comics After 1945. The first volume will have an introduction by Raymond biographer and authority Tom Roberts.

Famed novelist John Updike has died at age 76. Besides winning awards and being one of the best prose stylists of recent American letters, Updike was a friend of comics, having planned to be a cartoonist in his youth, and studied painting for quite a while. Or as Jeet Heer wrote:

Years ago while doing some research at Boston University on the papers of the cartoonist Harold Gray, the creator of the Little Orphan Annie, I came across a fan letter that was unusually eloquent. When I looked at the name of the bottom right hand corner of the type-written page it all became clear: it was a missive sent in 1948 by John Updike, then an aspiring cartoonist, when he was 15 years old. As I got to know Updike’s writing I started to realize that the letter was a simply one thread in a large and comfy biographical quilt. Like almost all American kids of his generation, Updike consumed comics even before he could read, so they were intertwined with his earliest experiences of art. Cartooning appealed to him as a potential vocation and he composed his first fledgling fan letters around 1942, when he was ten. After Updike settled on a literary career, he often returned to comics as a way of giving visual and mnemonic potency to his prose. His most recent writing on cartooning was his review earlier this year in The New Yorker of a much-disputed Charles Schulz biography. (For more on Updike and comics, see the articles I’ve written for the Boston Globe and the Guardian).

§ Cartoonist MK Reed shakes her fist at doom with a resource-filled post that includes alternative distributors and other places where you can sell comics besides Diamond. Recommended.

§ Speaking of other channels, Rik Offenberger talks to Haven’s Lance Stahlberg about the other game in town:

NRAMA: If a publisher finds they can’t meet the new benchmarks, can you help?

LS: That’s exactly why we’re here. Part of our mission is to help bring independent comics to the market. We give deserving titles a chance when Diamond won’t. We still have a submission and approval process, and you may get taken on consignment, but we boast a wide range of titles that cater to many tastes. Every new book we offer is treated the same.

We’ve been in business for a year now since we acquired and re-branded Cold Cut. In that year we’ve more than tripled our warehouse space, our inventory, and our active orders. Haven is definitely a viable alternative distribution channel, especially for newer stores just getting into the market who haven’t been conditioned to think of Previews as their only source for product.

Haven is going to try to step into the breach for comics that can’t make Diamond’s numbers, and will even start taking advance orders, which is a huge step.

§ Richard Bruton has a big overview and commentary.

§ Even The New York Times covered Diamond’s move.

§ Red 5’s Brian Clevinger also looks at the picture, but shows fighting spirit:

Let me put it plainly.

The basic model of getting new independent comics into shops is dead. Oh, it’ll do fine for Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, IDW, and maybe one or two others. But everyone else? Everyone out there working on a new project for publication right now? The old model no longer applies.

The good news is that this isn’t bad news.

• And then there’s MAD going quarterly. As the above shows, we still need MAD Magazine.

Mark Evanier points out that MAD is one of the most recognized brand names in comics and is unlikely to disappear:

Being a lover of its heritage, I’d be the first to trash Ficarra if the current MAD was unworthy of its name. It absolutely is not. But this kind of decline is very common in the periodical business. Playboy, this year, will only publish eleven issues and it isn’t because the public is losing its interest in gorgeous nude women. Even before we all began living on the Internet and doing 90% of our reading there, magazines were on the way out. And since everyone got a computer, it’s only become worse and worse. MAD has evolved to survive, adding color and advertising when that was necessary…but it can’t escape the fact that people just don’t read things on paper these days.

MAD will not go away. It’s too valuable a brand name to ever disappear. (National Lampoon is still around. It just hasn’t been a magazine since around 1988.) Today’s announcement probably translates as follows: “We need to keep the name alive and to keep key staffers and contributors in the family. But it’s losing money and we’re going to scale it back and minimize those losses while we figure out what to do with it.” Its new configuration is not a long-range plan…and maybe that long-range plan, whenever they arrive at it, will restore MAD to its former glory in some venue.

§ Contributor Tom Richmond comments:

MAD’s real problem is one they cannot avoid… they are a magazine. Name me a single magazine, outside tabloid trash peddlers, that isn’t struggling badly right now. I suppose that’s all about content also, right? TV Guide used to sell over 20 million copies a WEEK, and now they sell about 3 million copies… I suppose the quality of their TV schedules has badly declined. Playboy used to sell over 7 million copies an issue and today they are at 3 million copies…. of course we all know the quality of naked women has decreased dramatically since the 70’s.

§ As does Evan Dorkin:

This wasn’t just bad news because of our possibly losing a client or work, I feel really bad about the troubles the magazine, as well as the publishing world, is going through, and this just brought it home. I know that Diamond’s recently released policy changes will affect us more, SLG relies heavily on re-lists, and the small press will be crippled, further, by the new minimums, but the comic industry has always been, as Dan Vado put it, “built on jelly”, and I’ve been here for almost 20 years making minimal to moderate comic book money, so this comes as little surprise. But I wasn’t aware of how bad magazine distribution has become, and a venerable magazine like Mad, a comic but in some ways never thought of as a comic, well, seeing it take a gutshot like this shakes one up. Or at least me. There are people who live off their Mad income, we’re not one of those, and I can see this affecting a lot of freelancers who relied on 12 issues of material for their income. There’s going to be less room for folks like us, who came to the party late, and have less of a track record, but hopefully we’ll still pick up a gig here and there. I hope the new plan works out alright and Mad can stay on the shelves for a good while longer, there’s still a large fan base there, but publishing is just so squeezed. Jeez.

§ BTW, if you want to play along at home, you can see MAD’s yearly circ at this chart. It’s a pretty typical picture of erosion, with the huge problems at newsstands in the late ’70s that led to the creation of the direct market clearly shown, but also some odd RISES in circ, including one from ‘06 to ‘07. But then an even bigger decline for ‘08.

Number cruncher John Jackson Miller looks at Diamond’s yearend figures and concludes that in 2008, the industry moved sideways:

Now, to 2008: As noted, the industry didn’t so much grow or slip as move sideways. Top 300 Comics Unit and Dollar Sales were down 5% and 3% respectively, and the top 100 trades were up 4%. The overall figure is up 1.5% in my aggregated month-by month calculations, a process explained here (along with the caveats it entails).

That would make this the eighth straight year with an overall increase, but I am approaching this observation with some caution given statements out of Diamond that sales were off last year — three different sources there have stated sales declined slightly, with one referring to a 4% drop.

There’s a lot more to digest at Jackson’s site, but we’re too shell-shocked this week to absorb the numbers.

One thing that has emerged from a number of conversations we’ve had over the last few days: In 2008, comics slipped only a few percentage points, but this year, publishers expect to slip a little bit more. It’s just that margin that is killing everyone.

Yesterday, cartoonist Tom Tomorrow revealed the dire news that his strip, This Modern World, and all other weekly cartoons were being canceled by Village Voice Media, publisher of the Village Voice, the LA Weekly, and 13 other newsweeklies.

This still leaves me with eighty-odd papers, as well as Salon and Credo, so it’s not a fatal blow. And believe me, I wasn’t so naive as to imagine I was going to get through this economic mess without taking some hits. Nonetheless it’s a serious chunk of major cities to lose in one fell swoop (don’t get me started on the joys of consolidation this morning). Anyway, if you live in one of those cities and think this is a bad decision, you might want to share those feelings with the local editor. Politely, it should go without saying. And keep in mind: it’s not just my cartoon, it’s all of them, so put in a kind word for my compatriots while you’re at it. The only thing any of us have going for us in a situation like this is reader support.

The Minnesota Independent confirmed the cuts. We’re too bummed to get dressed and run to the corner to get a copy of the Voice to see which other strips were running. Their comics page mentioned only Tomorrow and Mr. Fish, but there were others.

Today, Tomorrow has updated the situation and runs a quote from Derf who says it’s doom-time:

OK. This is it. We’ve reached the apocalyptic final struggle for the future of cartoons.

Village Voice Media is the largest group of weekly newspapers in the biz. It is suffering from the ills that have befallen the rest of the newspaper industry: dwindling revenues and withering readership. Their corporate response, which was delivered to me Monday, is to “suspend” all cartoons across the chain, said suspension to last at least through the rest of the first quarter, and quite possibly beyond. That’s right. NO more cartoons. None. This is very probably a fatal blow to me. Not only is it a significant income hit, but these are six of the largest and finest papers in the weekly industry. I’ve been in the pages of some of these publications for years. The Riverfront TImes was one of my first papers. I started run- ning there in 1991! This isn’t about me “sucking ” either. Since I won the Robert F. Kennedy Award in 2006, one of the highest honors bestowed on a cartoonist, I’ve been losing papers steadily. The reason cited is always budget cuts. Always.

Jen Sorensen was also cut from the Voice, and puts it into more economic context:

Now, cartoons are cheap content that keep a certain number of readers habitually picking up the paper week after week. Those readers might not take the time to write the editor if they disappear; they’ll just stop picking up the paper. Or they’ll write us to complain. I do understand that low ad revenue means low page counts, which means space is at a premium. (Space is a mysteriously complex issue even in “normal” times.) But it seems to me that the few crumbs — and I do mean crumbs — these papers save by axing cartoons is self-defeating. Heaven help us if the cost of cartoons makes or breaks the industry.

Emphasis mine. Derf and Tomorrow urge readers to write to their local alt. weekly editors and complain about the cartoon cuts. It would seem counterintuitive in an era when everyone just pops onto craigslist to get an apartment or a used dresser to cut original content that readers might actually, y’know, enjoy, but we’re living in an economy of nickels and dimes.

Somebody better figure out a way to make money off the Internet…pronto.

If you’re a lawyer, everything surrounding the strange history of Stan Lee Media is a fountain of endless, cool, refreshing litigation. Now “legendary” lawyer Martin Garbus is representing Stan Lee Media shareholders in a suit against Stan Lee, Ike Perlmutter, Avi Arad, and Marvel, alleging the shareholders are owed some $750 million in profits from Marvel’s movies based on Lee’s characters.

The shareholders of Stan Lee Media Inc claim in a lawsuit to be filed in New York that Lee, creator of Spider Man, Ironman and Incredible Hulk, transferred all his interest in Marvel characters to SLMI. That entity was placed into bankruptcy by Stan Lee in 2001 and re-emerged in November 2006 with new shareholders, who claim they are owed as much as $750 million.

Lee denies the allegations and has filed his own $50 million lawsuit against SLMI claiming the company has hijacked his name and image and is thwarting his effort to develop such properties as “The Accuser” and “The Drifter” and others via his first-look deals with Disney and Virgin Comics.

We may not be a lawyer, but if Garbus is going to try to prove that Stan Lee had any rights to his characters to ASSIGN to shareholders, we imagine he must also be having a mighty fine sale on bridges, as well. Stan long ago gave up any claim to Marvel characters, although it would be interesting to read the filings.

Other Stan Lee Media legal wranglings involve a previous attempt to sue Marvel for $5 billion, bankruptcy, an SEC suit against former CEO Peter Paul for stock manipulation during the last dotcom boom/bust, and many, many more murky matters, including a Hillary Clinton fundraiser that remains a cornerstone of Clinton-era conspiracy theorists. In fact, on his blog, Paul insists, as he long has, that this case will be a lid ripper of epic proportions:

The suit on behalf of Stan Lee Media, to be filed in Manhattan Federal Court shortly, will expose an array of corporate corruption, government misconduct, cover-ups and obstructions of justice involving former President Bill Clinton, Senator Hillary Clinton, federal Judge Howard Matz appointed by Clinton, the creator of Spider Man, Stan Lee, the Chairman and billion dollar shareholder of Marvel Entertainment, Isaak Perlmutter, and a major Wall Street Law Firm, among others.

This suit, and the reputation and skill of the legendary American lawyer who is bringing it, on behalf of shareholders of a dot com that has been at the center of the 2000-2005 Galagate scandal that caused Hillary Clinton’s finance director to be indicted and tried in 2005 for election law fraud, and finally cost Hillary Clinton the White House, should vindicate former Hollywood “mogul” Peter Paul’s efforts to blow the whistle on the corporate, political and judicial corruption he witnessed and documented since his Hollywood internet studio with pop culture icon Stan Lee, ran out of funds during the dot com melt down of December, 2000.

Yes, it never ends.

Update: Per the comments, I corrected the link to Stan Lee’s 1998 Marvel contract (also the basis of Stan’s 2002 lawsuit against Marvel.) The other link was to Stan’s 1998 agreement with Stan Lee Entertainment Inc, just one of dozens and dozens of lengthy legal documents you can read, that have, we’d guess, been uploaded by the current Stan Lee Media team as they seek to prove their claims of nefarious deeds.

In our very brief rundown of the legal shenanigans involving Stan Lee Media, we forgot Stan’s OWN suit against them. And probably a lot of other stuff. As much as we wish we could draw a pot of tea and spend the whole day digging into this, alas, we have other pressing matters, and we’ll leave you with this Barron’s article to bring you up to speed. We’ll note that someone is going around the web (and our own comments) to hint at further Stan/Pow! mischief.

AND ONE FINAL NOTE: We’ve been covering Stan Lee legal wrangling since 2002, and while we were researching this story, we were sad to find so much previous reporting (including our own) long scrubbed, In some ways, print is more eternal than the Web, boys and girls, and don’t you forget it.

§ At last, we have our mocap Tintin and it is Jamie Bell, who starred in BILLY ELLIOT, JUMPER and…oh yeah, he was that Jimmy kid in KING KONG, so we should have seen that coming. (Peter Jackson is co-producing the proposed TINTIN trilogy.) If you are thinking Bell is too old, as we mentioned before, it’s going to be motion capture to cgi. In addition, Daniel Craig has been cast as Red Rackham! Gad Elmaleh, Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook have also been cast. The screenplay is by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish (variously, Dr. WHO, SHAUN OF THE DEAD), which bodes well.

§ People are asking: Is Seth Rogen’s GREEN HORNET Dead? after rumors at Sundance.

§ People are also asking: Has Production on ASTROBOY Shut Down?

Sadly, they’re now reporting that production on Imagi’s Astroboy movie appears to have shut down. This comes just days after I last reported on the film, on how it appears to have just scraped through its troubles with the recession. They have no official word on the matter, just information from those that have been working on the film.

§ This story on fiscal caution at movie studios reveals that Marvel Studios offered $250,000 to Mickey Rourke to play a villain in Iron Man 2, meaning they are being quite thrifty (or cheap, depending on how you look at it.)

§ A new comic-book based movie! It seems that Kevin Monroe (TMNT and WAR MONKEYS) will direct El Zombo Fantasma which ws based on his own comic for Dark Horse.

Published in 2005, the film is being pitched as a “Latino Hellboy”. The story follows “the mysterious murder of the world’s most notorious Mexican wrestler who bargains his way out of an eternity of fiery damnation by returning to Los Angeles to play guardian angel to a troublesome teen, Belisa Montoya. He soon discovers that the teen is not what she seems and that their fates have been intertwined for centuries.” LatinoReview’s Kellvin Chavez and IESB’s Robert Santchez are among the film’s producers.

If this movie gets made, it will be one of the VERY VERY few comic books created by a director/actor/nerdlebrity to actually go to the screen.

§ A video interview with manga horror master Junji Ito (Uzumaki, Museum of Terror) from the SAME HAT! SAME HAT! guys:

Highlights from this fantastic and casual look into Junji Ito’s life & work include:

* Ito-san showing off his original script outlines and rough panel layouts, with descriptions of his process when creating manga.

* A long discussion of the influence of urban legends on Ito’s manga, how he got the idea and visual inspiration for Tomie, and how he became a manga artist.

* A tour of Junji Ito’s studio and art desk, process using mirrors and photo-references in his work, and much more!

§ Jeff Parker ponders reactions to the just-released MYSTERIUS THE UNFATHOMABLE #1 by Parker and Tom Fowler:

Yet, in the midst of all the high marks, I keep seeing comments and discussion as to WHY this book is being done at Wildstorm. The short answer is “because Senior Editor Ben Abernathy asked Tom and I what we would like to do.” But I don’t know how to address people who feel WS is supposed to do only post-Watchmen superhero stories. Maybe… they’d like to try other things? I think that’s it’s a question that doesn’t demand being asked- a publisher wants to expand their base beyond superheroes into other genres. Should we look a gift horse in the mouth or give it some carrots and encourage it to keep pulling?

I guess what I want to say here is- let’s stop putting everyone in boxes and be glad something like Mysterius can find a home (that provides nice coated paper stock to show off Dave McCaig colors).

§ Mangacast’s manga report cards continue with Dark Horse, which gets high marks:

Dark Horse was my pick for Publisher of the Year for 2008. Like Del Rey and Viz in the past, DH took care of business in 2008 by releasing great titles with good production values. By reinforcing their foundation of high quality seinen manga, DH not only did a fine job maintaining its core audience, with new A-level properties they reached out to new readers at a time when other pubs were struggling to find readers for their catalogs. Best of all DH continues to bring out challenging and unique titles to a market that needs to see more diversity.

A few links that we may have missed: Bandai Entertainment and BLU Manga.

§ Tim O’Shea interviews Mike Dawson on ACE-FACE and FREDDIE & ME:

O’Shea: How hard is it to try to promote a project as unique as Ace-Face when the sequential art marketplace seems to be redefining itself in many ways on a daily basis?

Dawson: Yeesh, I’m not sure… everything feels a bit out of sorts at the moment. I guess I’m going to find out how well things go. I’m really, really excited to be doing this book with Chris Pitzer at AdHouse. My Freddie & Me experience was great, but since Bloomsbury isn’t traditionally a comics publisher, I sometimes felt a little disconnected from the comics scene. I am really happy to have my book be a part of a full line of great comics and graphic novels this time around.

The next time some dope complains about the wrestling coverage on THE BEAT, whether it’s about Rey Mysterio wearing a Flash costume on pay-per-view or CHIKARA’s latest comic book-themed cover, we’ll just point them to this picture. (The match was from a show Sunday at Arena San Juan Pantitlan. Thanks for the tip to the lucha libre expert known as The Cubs Fan.)

Evan, if you’re out there reading this, sadly, their opponents were not Los X-Men.

Posted by Mark Coale

THE BEAT has a lot in the queue to be posted, but we’ve been delayed by what one might term “affairs in the world of men.” We’ll be back as events allow.

UPDATE: Well, as the book blogosphere has been reporting, PW’s Editor-in-Chief Sara Nelson was laid off this morning, along with three other staffers. Since their names haven’t been made public yet, I’ll refrain from naming them. And to answer many emails coming in, this hasn’t directly affected The Beat or me, as of yet.

I will say that Sara has been hugely supportive of comics, The Beat and me, and I’m truly saddened to see her leaving. Sara isn’t a comics nut, like Calvin and me, but she greatly supported increasing our coverage of the category as it grew; she’s that uncommon (in my experience) head who saw the value in things even when they weren’t “her” thing, among her many other virtues. I’m sure she’ll land on her feet.

As for The Beat, we’ll just keep on doing what we do best until they tell us to stop or the universe suffers heat death, whichever comes first.

Kevin Huizenga has announced that OR ELSE, his periodical comic from D&Q, will not have a sixth issue:

I’ve decided that Or Else (the series) is done. It doesn’t make sense to do it this way anymore. Drawn and Quarterly have been great and I want to thank them. For sure I will still be putting out a lot of books and zines, forever, so save your pennies, and watch this space for more news as it becomes available. Thanks for reading.

In a subsequent post, he mentions a new 28-page mini-comic, RUMBLING CHAPTER 2. that will be available at USSCATASTROPHE. THe new comic has the same cover as the proposed OR ELSE #6, so one might guess some of the material will appear there.

Huizenga has declined further comment on the move. It’s easy to speculate that ending a low-selling — if critically acclaimed — indie periodical might be part of the fallout of Diamond’s recent moves, but let’s not jump to any conclusions.

Via Bill K.

Word via email and Twitter that Neil Gaiman’s THE GRAVEYARD BOOK has won the ultra-prestigious Newbery Award for children’s literature.

The awards are being presented at the winter ALA. According to The Beat’s reporter on the scene, Toon Books also won a Geisel Honor for Stinky by Eleanor Davis.

We’ll have official word as it’s released. Here’s Gaiman’s blog post on the matter. Congrats to Neil. We’re sure that of all the many honors he has won in his career, this must be one of the most treasured.

UPDATE: Complete list of winners here.

This week’s events include workshops and a Linda Medley appearance at the Seattle Public Library, a birthday signing for Mike Oeming, and a new opera by Harvey Pekar! There’s also an event on Tuesday that should be of special interest to BEAT readers…

Tuesday, January 27

New York, NY, 8 PM - Dan Slott and Heidi MacDonald at Comic Book Club

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN writer Dan Slott and The BEAT’s own Heidi MacDonald will share the stage at this week’s installment of New York’s regular live comic book talk show at the People’s Improv Theatre! Admission is $5.

Check out the rest of the week’s events under the cut!

(more…)

(AP Photo by Thibault Camus)

As previously reported, Paris’s famed Louvre museum is now housing an exhibition featuring comic books by some of the world’s best cartoonists, another signpost on comics’ Road to Global Domination.

The Louvre rarely showcases modern art. That fact alone makes this exhibition worth noting, and since this exhibition is as modern as it gets — the artwork on display is from original books commissioned by the museum. The artists were given essentially free rein, as long as their work included the exhibition’s Theme Ingredient: the Louvre itself.

BoDoi has a look at some pages by the European contributors.

Both Nicolas De Crécy and Marc-Antoine Mathieu have had their contribution to the project published on this side of the Atlantic by NBM Press. De Crécy’s GLACIAL PERIOD was nominated for a 2007 Eisner Award, and Mathieu’s MUSEUM VAULTS achieved similar fame upon its release last January.

The next Louvre book to be published should be Éric Liberge’s ODD HOURS, followed by ROHAN AT THE LOUVRE by Japan’s Hirohiko Araki, and a book by Belgium’s Bernard Yslaire which was created digitally — it seems that the Louvre showed his work on video monitors rather than in frames.

GLACIAL PERIOD was originally published in France in 2005, which testifies to how long this project has been in process, and we’re still years off from seeing all the books published stateside, since Araki and Yslaire have yet to finish their contributions. The exhibition is on display through April 13. Anyone been there yet?

Posted by Aaron Humphrey.

One comics genre that only old-timers talk about is “funny animals,” and it concerns the foibles and fantasies of humans beings thrown into relief by a cast of anthropomorphized creatures, often cute or endearing. Children like funny-animal comics (and cartoons — Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry), but a few of the comics greats were of this genre — Krazy Kat being the best known example — and it was very popular in the ’50s. Crumb’s Fritz the Cat was the jazzed up, “Funny animals aren’t just for kids anymore” version, and Gerber’s Howard the Duck continued that tradition.

It is also, of course, the staple of Disney and the great Carl Barks, and perhaps because of its corporate/childish origins, it hasn’t been much in fashion among US cartoonists for more than 20 years. In Northern Europe, however, where Disney comics reign supreme, you’ll still find artists working in the funny animal genre, notably the peerless Jason, but also the Swedish Martin Kellerman with Rocky, a very funny strip about the mishaps of Gen Xers/Milennials. Fantagraphics has published two ROCKY collections, but luckily you can also read it online. Rocky himself is a cartoon dog whose bad luck gets him into trouble and raging neurosis keeps him there. His friends are good-natured slackers with an equal lack of survival skills, and the universal situations, along with Kellerman’s wit — which comes across even in translation — makes for a very enjoyable reading experience.

We should note that Onstad’s ACHEWOOD is another strip in the funny animal tradition, and perhaps the most progressive example of the genre.

Screenwriter Todd Alcott examines the genre:

First, let me make something clear: there is nothing wrong, shameful or second-rate about adolescent fantasies. Adolescent fantasies drive the entire movie business and have for more than a generation. “Grown-up” drama was once where all the money was spent in Hollywood, now it’s the opposite: all the money is spent on adolescent fantasies, while adult drama must squeeze itself in where it can. Adolescent fantasies thus call the shots in this world of professionals — movies based on superhero comics, fantasy novels, children’s books and pop-culture flotsam attract the biggest names, the highest salaries and our brightest talents. No offense to the wonderful movies nominated for Best Picture this year, but the three movies I went to see more than once in the theaters, Iron Man, Kung Fu Panda and The Dark Knight, are not on the list. The question here is not “are superhero movies any good?” but “can superhero movies ever be anything but adolescent fantasies?”

If you’ve been following along at home today with our news stream, the announcement that MAD Magazine is going quarterly will not be such a shocker. Matt Brady has the news.

The venerable humor magazine today announced that starting with issue #500 in April, it will move to a quarterly publication schedule from its current monthly. The magazine’s version for younger readers, MAD Kids will cease publication with the issue on sale February 17th, while the final issue of MAD Classics will go on sale March 17th. Both of the spinoff magazines launched in 2005. Circulation numbers for the magazines were not readily available.

Handling the news with style typical of MAD, Editor John Ficarra said, “The feedback we’ve gotten from readers is that only every third issue of MAD is funny, so we’ve decided to just publish those.”

The move will come as no surprise, given the downturn in magazine publishing and problems with distribution, but is still a saddening reminder of the changing media landscape. In years when superhero comics were squeaking along, MAD was DC’s highest selling periodical, and has become an American institution with its satirical images becoming iconic reminders of the power of humor.

At any rate, the cut does explain why several MAD staffers were let go yesterday. 

Only the New York Post seems to have picked up on this story, but it’s a biggie. Another major magazine distributor has joined Anderson News in raising its rates to distribute magazine copies to newsstands by seven cents — regardless of whether the magazines sell or not, according to the Post. Publishers have resisted, but now Source Interlink has also increased its fees. Together, the two distributors control half of the US magazine wholesale distribution network:

The remaining big distributors - Jimmy Pattison’s News Group, based in Atlanta and Vancouver, British Columbia, and New York-based Hudson News - have not sought a fee hike.

But if all magazine distributors follow suit, publishers worry it could sock them with an additional $1 billion a year in expenses at a time when they are contending with plunging advertising revenue and sagging newsstand sales.

Already, publishers predicted Anderson News’ price hike would cost them an additional $200 million a year.

“We’re in for it now,” said one worried publisher after he got the Source Interlink news. “It’s great to say, ‘Screw Anderson,’ but who are we going to get to replace them?”

Like Anderson News, Source Interlink claims it needs the fee hike to survive.

Ya gotta love the Post’s old skool reportage on this. Considering that magazine distribution is an old skool business with lots of ties to people who might appear in Martin Scorsese movies, it’s appropriate. We’re not too hep to the background ourselves, but our guess is that if this is remotely true, and these rate hikes go into effect, the magazine publishing world is going to look a little like central Florida after a Category 4 hurricane.

The Beat has confirmed that DC Senior Editor Bob Schreck was laid off yesterday. Other layoffs, expected in the wake of Warner Brothers’ companywide 10 percent reduction, include Subcriptions Manager Christine Sawicki and several MAD Magazine personnel. The magazine-related layoffs certainly reflect the general crumbling of the entire magazine business.

As for Schreck, the layoff is more of a surprise since he is generally considered one of the top editors in the business. Starting at Comico, he also worked at Dark Horse, where he edited SIN CITY and MADMAN, then co-founded Oni Press (with Joe Nozemack) and then moved to DC where he worked on THE DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN, ALL-STAR SUPERMAN, and ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER. He moved to Vertigo two years ago, where his office was developing several new graphic novel projects, including THE NOBODY by Jeff Lemire.

Schreck’s departure won’t take effect for several months. Given his track record and long list of friends in the business, it’s unlikely he’ll be gone for long.

The Beat has confirmed that Diamond laid off 13 employees yesterday, including the managing editor and designer for the recently canceled Diamond Dialog magazine. In addition to the layoffs, wages for management and other staff were reduced. According to a letter sent to staff by COO Chuck Parker, the cost cuts were a result of the generally poor economy and a four percent decline in sales in 2008.

While these layoffs are confirmed, rumblings of layoffs at DC are rampant this morning. We’ll have details as they emerge.

Sulk (Vol 1): Bighead and Friends

Grant Morrison, eat your heart out!

This official press release brings together all known facts about this year’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and if the names “Guibert” and “Tatsumi” mean anything to you, you will probably want to be there. A summary:

Drawing a diverse array of cartoonists from around the world, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) is a phenomenal exhibition of international comics talent, and a chance to celebrate Canadian comics authors here at home. TCAF will showcase the talents of its guests through an ambitious programme of exhibitor presentations, gallery showings, lectures, workshops, discussion panels, interactive readings, and the 2009 Doug Wright Awards for Canadian Cartooning.

At the center of the Festival proceedings are the international premieres of numerous long-anticipated works, both by and celebrating Canadian cartoonists, and by graphic novel creators from around the world! Canadian programming highlights will include the debuts of The Collected Doug Wright - both a collection of work and tribute to the beloved Canadian newspaper cartoonist - and George Sprott, a new graphic novel by Seth collecting his acclaimed comics from The New York Times Magazine. Toronto’s own Bryan Lee O’Malley, creator of the popular Scott Pilgrim series will attend TCAF to present the fifth volume of the series, and to discuss the Hollywood adaptation of his work filming in Toronto this spring!

Among the international cartoonists appearing at TCAF for the first time will be: Emmanuel Guibert (France), with his new graphic novel The Photographer, a gripping account of the work of Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan; Yoshihiro Tatsumi (Japan), debuting his massive 840-page biography A Drifting Life; Anke Feuchetenberger (Germany) will present new work at the Festival (TBA); American Adrian Tomine will premiere the softcover edition of his bestseller Shortcomings; and American Ivan Brunetti will offer the collection of his dark humour comics, entitled Ho!.

It’s been nearly a year since Nicholas Gurewich gave up drawingTHE PERRY BIBLE FELLOWSHIP, so what’s he been doing? Well, for one thing, he has a new shirt. Also, according to a recent site update:

The PBF Almanack will be coming out in February. It features a good interview with David Malki!

Still waiting to hear back from Channel 4 about the pilot.

Nick Abadzis got my package.

Channel 4? Ah, you’ll recall that PBF is very popular in the UK:

PWCW: Speaking of which, you’re also working on a television pilot for the BBC that’s based on PBF. How’s that coming along? NG: I’ll be adapting a couple of the strips for the pilot, and I just got the news the other day that they wanted to make it longer because they liked the 12-minute treatment I sent. They want to make it a 30-minute pilot. I’m actually working with a British television company, Endemol Entertainment. A number of people there had ordered some prints from me, and apparently someone brought them into the office. It became known amongst them that they really liked the comic, and [making the pilot] was just a decision that came about organically because of that. They all realized they liked the strip, and said, “Why don’t we do a show?”

Everyone has commented on how clever and cool is this viral video for WATCHMEN — a fake news broadcast from 1970 on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Dr. Manhattan’s “birth.” We agree, except that in 1970, as now, most anchormen had a little more hair.

(Which reminds us, every time we see a promo for the US version of Life on Mars, we wonder, what is the point of setting a show in the ’70s and making it look just like a show from the ’00s?)

A few links take you to THE NEW FRONTIERSMAN, where further Easter eggs are being released regularly. Thank goodness that awful lawsuit is over!

In other WATCHMEN news, the complete 12-part “motion comic” adaptation — currently available on iTunes — will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on March 3rd. The whole thing runs more than five hours and was supervised by Dave Gibbons.

§ Michael C. Lorah conducts a bilingual interview with David B. about his recently released compendium of menacing dreams, NOCTURNAL CONSPIRACIES.

§ Esther Keller has discovered something that she was not meant to find out: WIMPY KID books are NOT graphic novels…so why are they always topping the GN bestseller lists?

When my students are crazed for books, it’s hard not to be overjoyed. Anything that keeps the kids reading! But I’ve been bothered lately that Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid is being called a comic or a graphic novel. It’s not. I even sat at work today, reading the third installment to prove myself wrong, but instead, I became even more convinced that this is a regular old book which is illustration with (hilarious) cartoons.

Now that Esther Keller has uncovered this age-old conspiracy, she must seek the truth, and seek the code. Can she do it in time?

§ Diana Schutz talks about editing with CBR:

“Generally, I’ve always felt that my job is to help the creator realize his or her vision to the utmost degree: that means working with both the creator and the other departments at Dark Horse–in terms of design, production, printing, marketing–to create the most favorable publishing environment possible for the work. That means not only managing the project but also overseeing quality at each and every stage of production, at the creator’s end and at the publishing end. So, no matter whether it’s script or pages of art coming from the cartoonist, or whether it’s a design for a title page coming from our production department, my job is to make sure it’s as good as it can possibly be. **And** on deadline!”

§ Comics have made it into the Louvre! What’s next? Comics on the moon????

§ Teen who has already created five comic books and 20 comic strips now menacing airline passengers:

“One of my favorite places to sell my comics is on airplanes, because you have some time to talk and get to know people,” Jake says. “I think it also helps that I have so many freckles. People like that.”

§ LA Times reviewer has comics’ number all right:

Oh, I know Iron Man and Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk are all actually culturally significant metaphors for the eternal battle of the ego and the id, or the natural world and the industrial, or the spiritual and the physical. And I know we don’t call them comic books anymore, we call them graphic novels. Comic-Con is bigger than Cannes. Whatever.

The point is that “Wolverine and the X-Men” premieres on Nickelodeon tonight at 8 and it’s good to see a cartoon that remembers what cartoons are supposed to do. Zap, slime and blow things up. It’s almost heartwarming to see feature characters who speak in short declarative sentences that you can usually predict two beats beforehand, and who generally save the world.