Okay, just a few after dinner cordials as we close the books on the annual Imbolc rituals:

§ Peerless Peggy Burns of D&Q has the last word on the indie sales matter, by pointing out that comparing apples to sea scallops makes no sense whatsoever:

Bookscan doesn’t provide an accurate report, but it can be helpful in gauging where our sales lie in relation to other publishers. I use it the same way I use an Amazon ranking — very loosely. I admit to logging in every Wednesday to see our previous week’s numbers. I don’t look to see how our books are performing against Naruto or Wimpy Kid, I look to see how our books perform among our distributor FSG’s titles, and I look to see how our books perform compared to our closest publishing peer, McSweeneys, and to make sure our books perform as well as the majority of Pantheon’s graphic novels (Maus and Persepolis are in their own league, of course.) When I see that Bookscan says that Lynda Barry’s What It Is has comparable numbers to Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon’s Maps and Legends for McSweeneys, I am happy.

Anyone who has read the entire debate here should click on the link, as it’s must reading from a very informed viewpoint.

§ Marc-Oliver Frisch looks at the intertwined economic fortunes of trades and periodicals:

The question of Vertigo’s paperback sales is a classic absence-of-proof case for most series. There is no proof in the available numbers that (a) Vertigo series sell better in the book market than in the direct market or that (b) most current Vertigo series sell well anywhere at all. But just because the limited numbers we know don’t show it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not there, of course, which makes Hibbs’ statement problematic.

§ And finally, Dick Hyacinth has the most accurate assessment of all:

Note #1 about recent Bookscan conversations: I think the current debates reveal more about the rivalries and relationships between prominent comics bloggers than anything useful about the numbers themselves. This probably would have amused me more a few years ago.

Over at Robot 6, writer Ken Marcus (SUPER HUMAN RESOURCES) has a long list of marketing tips that, in the Post-Benchmark era, will need to be heeded more than ever, as he faces harsh facts:

People do not care about you. Not readers, not retailers, not the press and maybe not even your publisher. No one gives two turds about your book except for you. (The publisher thing isn’t really true, but regardless, this NEEDS to be your working mindset.) So making other people give two turds about your idea rests solely on your shoulders. That’s another way to say “marketing.”

If you build it, they will ignore it. Look, there are too many baseball diamonds in too many fields in that Previews catalog. And most of them look better than yours. Too many people think they can send their files off to the printer and book their table in San Diego. Nope. You’ve created your book. Now comes the hard part.

You’re getting great press when your comic comes out. AKA, you’re ‘effed. This is the No. 1 thing I don’t get. Creators doing all their interviews and previews the month their comic is out. Indy comics are all about pre-ordering. Getting people to ask their LCS for your comic the month it’s in Previews. This is the already-on-life-support lifeblood of indy comics. You have a few weeks before your issue #1 hits Previews and through the rest of that month. That is your sweet spot for pushing all your press and PR.

There much more, equally common sense advice, but the last bit we quoted is both accurate and frustrating. The disconnect between marketing to the comics shop retailers who are the customers for Diamond and most comics publishers, and marketing to the people who are the customers of the comics shops is still a wide one. In a world of tiny margins, it’s a hard one to negotiate.

Or as someone very smart about comics we were talking to the other day told us, in complaining about the ideas of some publishers, “They think an interview in Newsarama is all they need.”

In all their business news yesterday, a firm opening, title, and other info for the Spider-Man musical was announced. You’ll recall that the musical will be directed by Julie Taymor with music and lyrics by Bono and the Edge, and a book by Taymor and Glen Berger. No casting has been announced, but in red carpet interviews, Evan Rachel Wood keeps hinting strongly that she’ll play Mary Jane.

“Spider-Man, Turn Off The Dark” opens on Thursday, February 18, 2010 at Broadway’s Hilton Theatre, 213 West 42nd Street. And some lucky Broadway goers will get to see the show when preview performances begin Saturday, January 16, 2010.

Stay tuned to Marvel.com to find out about your chance to purchase tickets to “Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark” before they go on sale to the general public!

[snip]

Group tickets now on sale. Single tickets will go on sale June, 2009. For more information about group tickets, visit the “Spider-Man” website at www.SpidermanOnBroadway.com or by calling 1-800-Broadway.

The NY Times has more info, although it will sadden some:
Mr. Bryan-Brown said that the music and lyrics were largely complete, but that Bono and the Edge would “of course write more songs as necessary.” He said that the subtitle of the musical, “Turn Off the Dark,” is the title of one of the songs, and added that there were no plans to use or riff on the well-known theme song from the television cartoon series about the Marvel comic-book superhero.
Incidentally, despite widespread reports in the New York theater gossip scene that the musical is wildly over budget, according to their earnings call, ever thrifty Marvel is not on the hook at all:

Regarding the Spider-man musical, for 2009 there’s no material financial effects. Just to reiterate, we are not investing any capital into the Spider-man musical and we do have a very significant first dollar gross participation in all the revenues. So for 2009, there should be no financial effects; 2010, again no cost effects, only whatever revenues we get as our gross participation in the show, including merchandise revenues, by the way, which some of these shows do significant business in.

The first four issues of COLD HEAT, the collaboration between Ben Jones (Paper Rad) and Frank Santoro, are now available online. FREE. Future print issues will be available for print on demand. In case you are unfamiliar with the title, the authors describe it as “the story of Castle, an 18 year old girl who embarks on a life altering adventure through anti-depressants, corporate rock ‘n’ roll, globalization and sex.

“Cold Heat is a hypnotically tranced out, maximum volume take on the action/adventure genre that stays out all night and doesn’t come home until the party’s over and it’s time to crash.”

§ Scott McCloud has relaunched scottmccloud.com, and there you can read the Google Comic, THE RIGHT NUMBER, and other early and middle period McCloud experiments in web comics. Above, “The Right Number” ©2003 and TM Scott McCloud.

§ Papercutz, the line of kids comics that publishes NANCY DREW, BIONICLE, TALES FROM THE CRYPT and so on, has launched a creators’ blog.

§ Paul Levitz Has Retired, says Scott Edelman.

§ Jennifer Contino recalls how her late grandmother encouraged her to be a superhero fan.

As I’ve said before, I can’t remember a time when superheroes weren’t in my life. As this picture proves, I was playing with Mego superhero dolls as a toddler. The beautiful woman there is my grandmother. While a lot of my aunts were trying to get me to play with Barbies or some other “girl-friendly” toy, grandma bought me superheroes for Christmas and my birthdays. She never tried to force the blonde bimbo brigade upon me and encouraged anything and everything I enjoyed. In fact, she played superheroes with me, watched Wonder Woman and Bionic Woman with me, and listened to me ramble on and on about my favorite characters and what I loved about each of them.

(more…)

Both David P. Welsh and John Jakala take a crack at listing their favorite humor manga. Lots of good stuff mentioned — from Sgt. Frog to Slam Dunk to Club 9 Your and My Secret. We’d advise checking out both lists, but we can’t believe no one mentioned Akira Toriyama, (Dr. Slump) but, you know, humor is subjective.

We just got a copy of the first volume of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei by Koji Kumeta, and it does for girls schools what Cromartie High does for boys: Parodying the “heroic teacher” genre, the main character is a depressed, suicidal jerk and in each chapter he meets some dysfunctional student and instead of helping her become a better person, encourages her to join him in a suicide pact. There’s a lot of very specific Japanese social satire here, and Del Rey helpfully includes a lot of notes in the back. The art is striking, too.

And one more tidbit of movie news — occasional cartoonist and oft-times director Michel Gondry is supposedly going to direct that GREEN HORNET movie that stalled out when Stephen Chow bowed out as director. Reportedly, Chow is still on board to play Kato, and the decision to replace him with the formally daring Gondry shows that the producers are sticking with their idea of a more idiosyncratic crimefighting film. Slimmed-down Seth Rogen will still star.

Sorry we were so brief on our report on Marvel’s 4Q and year-end reports yesterday. You can read the earnings call transcript right here, and as usual, Publishing is mentioned only a few times:

For full year ’08, our publishing division continues to be a strong performer, with 41% of dollar share and 46% unit share in its primary market, the direct market. Our publishing margins are down slightly due to investment in digital media of approximately $2 million net during 2008.

INVESTMENT. Whoa.

In the actual PR, there’s this:

Marvel’s Publishing Segment net sales increased 9%, or $2.8 million, to $33.1 million in Q4 2008 from $30.3 million in Q4 2007, principally reflecting a larger number of high profile titles being released in Q4 2008, as well as one extra week of sales in Q4 2008. Marvel’s major publishing events in 2008 took place in the final three quarters of the year versus major publishing events in 2007 which took place in the first three quarters of the year. Q4 2008 operating income increased 6% to $13.0 million, an operating margin of 39%, compared to 41% in Q4 2007. The decrease in operating margin reflects investments being made in Marvel’s digital media initiatives.

For the entire year, buoyed by strong DVD sales for IRON MAN and HULK 2, Marvel reported net income of $205.5 million, so that’s one percent of the profits going into R&D for online. A few people have pointed out that maybe Marvel could just set aside an extra boodle so they can afford Mickey Rourke for IRON MAN 2, but you know, Marvel didn’t survive and thrive by throwing money around, which is why that “investment” in digital online is so startling.

Both Warners and Marvel released upcoming movie dates yesterday, and everyone got excited.

Warners:

JONAH HEX (starring Josh Brolin) August 6, 2010
GREEN LANTERN (directed by Martin Campbell) December 17, 2010
And…
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART II July 15, 2011

And here’s Marvel:

IRON MAN 2 (still no final word on Mickey Rourke) May 7, 2010
THOR (directed by Kenneth Branagh) July 16, 2010
THE FIRST AVENGER: CAPTAIN AMERICA (No further deets) May 6, 2011
THE AVENGERS (no further deets) July 15, 2011

Sorry we disappeared yesterday. We had chores to do.

BTW, isn’t a shame that comics don’t have word balloons on the covers any more?

Jim Milliot has a quick analysis of Marvel’s year-end numbers:

Marvel’s publishing division finished 2008 with sales of $125.4 million, virtually flat with 2007 when revenue was $125.7 million. Operating profit slipped to $47.3 million from $53.5 million, which the company said was primarily due to ongoing investments in digital initiatives. Unlike most traditional book publishers, Marvel did well at the end of the year with fourth quarter sales up 9%, to $33.1 million and earnings rising to $13 million from $12.3 million, which the company said benefitted from higher profile releases.

However, ‘09 is expected to be down a bit without the added boost of IRON MAN.

Sales in the publishing segment are expected to be flat at best with sales ranging from $115 million to $125 million with earnings continuing to be negatively impacted by digital media spending.

Kristy Valenti looks at a lesser known facet of George “Krazy Kat” Herriman’s career — his illustrations for archy and mehitabel. Written by journalist Don Marquis, these popular blank verse poems supposed a friendship between a cockroach (archy) and an alley cat (Mehitabel) who liked to dance in the moonlight. The poems had no punctuation because archy typed them out by jumping up and down on the keys of a typewriter:

Though Mehitabel resembles a gendered (Mehitabel is both intensely feminine and pointedly undomesticated), more feline version of Krazy Kat, Herriman’s Archy suggests, more than resembles, a cockroach (if one could pinpoint what kind of cockroach Archy is, in my humble opinion it would be an American one): it may be the hat. Which is not to say that Herriman’s version of Archy isn’t definitive: it is. Other illustrators, before and after Herriman, have tried their hand (including Edward Gorey), but none have matched Herriman: his rendering of Archy is simply a whole other layer of characterization. And, though the font (and the lack of capitalization) is diegetic, Marquis couldn’t possibly have found an illustrator more sensitive to language: when certain lines are transcribed in Herriman’s lettering, they seem especially to sing (they’re so full of life, they’re practically vibrating).

If you’ve never read archy and mehitabel, it’s worth searching out — jangling and whimsical odes to the Bohemian life, as in “the song of mehitabel”:

i have had my ups and downs
but wotthehell wotthehell
yesterday sceptres and crowns
fried oysters and velvet gowns
and today i herd with bums
but wotthehell wotthehell
i wake the world from sleep
as i caper and sing and leap
when i sing my wild free tune
wotthehell wotthehell
under the blear eyed moon
i am pelted with cast off shoon
but wotthehell wotthehell

William Shatner, beloved blowhard, pitchman, voice-over actor, and the man who made the phrase “Get a life!” famous as a nerd icon, would like to run for Prime Minister of his native planet, Canada:

The 77-year-old star said: “My intention is to be Prime Minister of Canada, not Governor General, which is mainly a ceremonial position.”

Shatner revealed his lofty ambition in response to a letter from a fan who urged him to put himself forward for the Governor General of Canada.

The Governor General is appointed by the monarch - which in Canada is currently Queen Elizabeth II - to perform the constitutional duties of the sovereign on her behalf.

In his letter, Shatner regretfully added: “I must, with my deepest thanks, turn down your honourable intent to advance me as Governor General. Besides which, I don’t have time to be Governor General.” Despite his busy schedule, the actor is confident he has what it takes to run the country, explaining: “As Prime Minister I can lead Canada into even greater exploits.”

While there is some potential that this is an errant thought and not a planned career change, the idea of the non-aggressive, harmonious people of Canada being led by Captain Kirk does lead down fruitful paths of reverie. One could imagine Kirk and his exploration team landing on Bloor Street, and the ensuing conversation with Spock over the communicator.

“Captain, sensors indicate a Grade 4 civilization, organized around the concept of a sporting competition involving men propelling themselves on ice while striking a small rubber disk with a curved stick. The game usually involves the ritual consumption of a beverage with intoxicating effects by the supporter of each team.”

“Spock, such a peaceful people should be left unaffected by Federation politics.”

“Captain, according to my data, the people of Canada are also known for their attractive women.”

“In that case, I’d better run for Prime Minister.”

As the swallows return to Capistrano, as the bats return to Colossal Caves, as the wildebeest migrate across the Serengeti, and the alewives return to Lake Damariscotta, so we celebrate the season with the annual Hibbs/MacDonald/Deppey BookScan debate. Here’s last year’s bout from The Beat, with many of the same competitors taking part in this Soap Box Derby of sales figures. TRADITION!

Today, over at Journalista, Dirk offers his annual disclaimer and you can tell he’s serious because he uses words like “proffered.” He also tweaks Hibbs a bit by quoting very, very similar passages by Hibbs vis-à-vis indie/art comic sales from every year since 2003. Dirk finds the smoking gun of Hibbs’s ulterior motives right here in the Beat comment section:

Actually, I’d characterize my argument as “the argument that ‘oh but if only we could get “lit comics” out of the stinky dirty backwards Direct Market, then everything would be light and honey forever and ever, amen!’ is pretty demonstrably wrong”

and then spends a good few paragraphs circling, stabbing, stamping, yelling “Ugga! Bugga” and while still failing to refute anything.

Look, I don’t want to live in a world where L&R #1 sells only 719 copies in bookstores. But before anyone goes any further with all this “It’s a guess, it’s wrong, it doesn’t add up” stuff, let’s look at one fact about the BookScan numbers. While they DO NOT measure all book sales across all channels, they do measure 100% of sales in approximately 70 percent of bookstore channels. So by any standard, it is a metric for comparison, analysis and debate.

In order to prove that BookScan is wrong, Dirk dons his sleuth hat:

Hibbs’ claim that Love and Rockets: New Stories #1 sold just 719 copies, however, motivated me to e-mail Fantagraphics’ Gary Groth, Kim Thompson and Eric Reynolds to find out if they could add some light to all the heat. While I suppose it’s possible that Hibbs’ BookScan reportage might turn out to be true, it struck me as being unlikely. Still, one must investigate, and the resulting email exchanges seemed to produce light and heat in equal amounts: Not because the Fanta staffers were dissembling or in any way less than forthcoming, but because the nature of the mass market essentially makes even the vague sort of instant tallying one expects from the Direct Market to be impossible in the short term. Short of absolute disaster, any attempt to figure out how a given title has done in the returnable booksellers’ market within its first year of release inevitably turns out to be little more than guesswork.

So is that dissembling or not? Sounds like it to me. Dirk goes on to present the Internet version of a school film on the publishing business, explaining how mighty catalogs roll out and orders are placed, and books are sold and returns are made, and it’s all a great unknowable system of terror and awe, but just to reiterate, BookScan sales are via UPC scans, so they are not guesswork at all They are sell through in a certain percentage of the retail market.

That said, of course there are other channels and other markets. It would be interesting to see what Reynolds, Groth, and Thompson all had to say on the topic in a neutral ground, but unfortunately Dirk just quotes them in random bits so it’s hard to see context.

And in the end, what’s sauce for the autobio cartoonist is sauce for the spandex superhero. Groth suggests that

It doesn’t make any sense to differentiate libraries from bookstores; they both buy books from the same wholesaler(s) at the same price. It’s like differentiating chain stores, indies, PXes, big box stores or any other particularized sales destination.

That’s certainly true, but that means you also have to count SUPERHERO and MANGA sales to libraries, and no one wants to do THAT do they?

Another place where I think Dirk gets fuzzy is here:

According to Groth, there are currently over 10,000 copies of Willie & Joe in play outside the Direct Market, while the figure that Hibbs quotes BookScan as giving for it is just 5485 copies. While more returns are likely, we’re nonetheless talking about a title that’s been in the marketplace for nine months and counting. At this point, one could be justified in assuming that it’s a good way over the hump. And if that number winds up holding steady, we’re talking about not a 10% difference, not a 30% difference, but somewhere near a 100% difference between BookScan and the real world. What will the end figure wind up being, do you think? 90% off the mark? 80%? 70%?

That is categoricaly not true. Once again, Bookscan measures sell-through, the number of books that have been purchased by consumers, whether via a bookstore or an online retailer. 10,000 is the sell-in number. It’s the reason why you will walk into a bookstore and SEE a copy of Willie and Joe on the shelf while browsing. That sell-in has not yet been converted to sell-through. Later in the piece, Groth mentions that publishers can expect a third of books sold-in to be returned, which is indeed about industry average. (20 percent returns is considered a very good number.) It is quite likely that many of the FBI books that are on shelves but not sold to consumers are at indie bookstores where the publisher is a favorite and the individual owners believe in the titles. Heroes and visionaries, you might say.

Where I do agree with Dirk is that if selling graphic novels into bookstores wasn’t profitable for Fantagraphics and D&Q, they probably would have gone out of business some time ago. Or as I wrote the other day, 

I can also attest that sometimes selling only 2000 copies on BookScan is perfectly okay. Anything in five figures is probably very profitable, and numbers far lower than that could also make money or break even. I have no idea what the golden number is — it undoubtedly varies from book to book and publisher to publisher.

To me the question is still how to get sell copies of the good stuff to people who would enjoy it? L&R #1 may have sold-in 4000 copies, but can it sell-through more? Can Bill Mauldin sell more copies? Can Tatsumi?  Can Tezuka?

Every year when these numbers come out, there is some bristling from the indie community (probably partially brought on by Hibbs’ taunting on the subject) on the fact that superhero comics appear to sell more in the stores measured by BookScan than indie/art comix do. On the surface it seems bad, but I assure you, there are lots and lots of books from Marvel, DC and book publishers that sell in numbers just as “bad” or worse. As mentioned above, everyone’s magic number of profitability is different. I’m not going to embarrass anyone, but you know who you are.

What needs to be understood by a lot of people (and this is something I myself have only begrudgingly accepted) is that not every comics “classic” is really a timeless classic that speaks to generation after generation. All of the reissues that come out in 2008 really proved that, but this is a subject I hope to return to shortly in a more focused manner.

And this hopefully concludes this year’s installment of The BookScan Debates. Until next time!

Came the Dawn by Al Feldstein and Wally Wood from SHOCK SUSPENSTORIES #9 ~ June-July/1953.

AND

Frank Frazetta’s never finished sketches for a remake of the story.

Damn.

Wait I can’t just go on. Look at that first panel, by Wood. Every panel in the entire story displays a similar mastery of composition and texture. Look at the incredible complexity of the different areas of light and dark. There is more going on in this one panel than in entire Renaissance paintings. As busy as the panel is — there’s even a portrait of an INDIAN CHIEF crammed in — there is no confusion or lack of clarity. The eye is drawn, of course, to the exquisite, inviting figure of the woman, rendered in silky crosshatching, but she stands out against the stark geometric background of the wall covered with frames, and the hard-edged shadows of the man. If I had one cavil, it would be that the cat (the CAT?) is floating in the air, not lying on the floor, but Wood also made the lower left part of the panel more hazy and indistinct to reflect the flickering firelight, so perhaps it is on purpose. Again, I am dumbfounded by the complete confidence of storytelling, design and rendering that this single panel shows — and every other panel is just as strong.

As for Frazetta…the fluidity and liveliness of this drawing astonish me. Again, notice the different line quality that gives texture and form to all the different shapes in the (very busy) panel. The figure of the man is alert, menacing (even if he wasn’t holding a rifle you’d be scared of him), tangible, the unexpected but realistic placement of his feet giving him a solid grounding in reality despite the obvious idealization of the drawing.

Those guys were good.

[Via Matthias Wivel]

Evan Dorkin is selling some art, including this classic pin-up. Now who wouldn’t want to own this?

§ Sasha Watson profiles Marc-Antoine Mathieu and THE MUSEUM VAULTS, which was easily one of the best but most overlooked GNs of ‘08:

“I started out imagining fantastical spaces that would give me total freedom to talk about a Louvre that was invisible but universal—an infinite space, like the space of art itself,” he says. To find this space, he had to “look sideways, out of the corner of my eye, take a significant step back from the subject right from the beginning.”

Of this method, Douar says, “Marc-Antoine Mathieu created a universe that is like the Louvre, but not exactly. It’s a kind of parallel world in which he examines, not the work, but the discourse around art.”

§ George Khoury takes a very personal look at the history of comic book journalism.

§ Paul Kupperberg is now a columnist for Comics Career, and he starts out with Thought: The Enemy of Art

§ Sean T. Collins is swept into BLACK HOLE.

§ Kiel Phegley interviews the legendary Bill Sienkiewicz.

§ Apparently, the creator of the Essex Trilogy and the upcoming Vertigo graphic novel THE NOBODY, Jeff Lemire, has joined the Standard Attrition crew.

§ Rick Veitch explains how they did special effects back before computers — you won’t believe your eyes!

§ Ed Chavez (we think) at Mangacast looks at declining numbers of Japanese manga magazines, but the list is a little esoteric if you’re not already conversant with the figures. Shōnen Jump selling 2,788,164 a week SOUNDS great…but it’s down, although the piece doesn’t make clear how much down.

No demo is more competitive than shounen. Look at how few magazines there are and then look at the numbers for the best sellers. Seven figure circulation is something that magazines anywhere globally would kill for. And then again, these numbers are down. Moreover, they have been going down for a while now. Sunday’s drop really has surprised me especially when considering how many of their titles are now becoming anime - Hayate the Combat Butler, Keichi the Strongest Disciple, Cross Game, Kekkaishi, Zettai Karen Children, MAJOR, Case Closed. I wonder if the controversies Shogakukan’s Sunday had last year attributed to their continued drop. They’ll definitely look to Takahashi Rumiko’s new title for a boost in 2009.

§ Speaking of down, the NY Daily News has a piece alarmingly titled “Batman, Iron Man among comic book stars hit hard by recession”, but it turns out to be an amusing meta-piece about how the characters are being written in the down economy:

While Batman has yet to have to tighten his utility belt, his alter ego, Bruce Wayne, has disappeared in a recent story line, leaving the board of Wayne Enterprises struggling to keep the company afloat.

And he’s just one of several superheroes looking to get up, up, and away from their financial problems.

“I don’t see how it doesn’t work into our storytelling if not only our readers are feeling it, but our creators are feeling it,” said Dan DiDio, executive editor at DC Comics.

§ Finally, I didn’t know writer Flannery O’Connor was a cartoonist in her youth.

Aside from Tilda Swinton’s designer potato sack, there weren’t that many surprises at last night’s Oscars®. The nerd movie contingent was represented but didn’t really prevail; as everyone in the world knew would happen, the late Heath Ledger won for his portrayal of the Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT, marking the first acting Oscar win for a comic book movie. TDK, which just passed the magic $1 billion mark in global box office (only the fourth movie to do so) also won for Best Sound Editing. Our beloved WALL*E won for Animated Feature, but the highly regarded WALTZ WITH BASHIR lost Best Foreign Film in what was thought of as an upset.

The lack of big nominations for THE DARK KNIGHT (and other popular action films) has left a few in Hollywood discomfited:

For executives, filmmakers and publicists, the real shock came with the exclusion of “The Dark Knight” from this year’s list of best-picture nominees.

It wasn’t so much about admiration for the picture itself, though there was plenty of that. Insiders read the snub more as a rejection by the academy, once comfortably regarded as an adjunct of the industry that created it, of what the inner circle does best: Build complex, monumental films that move millions.

To keep the mood here from curdling wouldn’t have taken much of a bow toward the audience. A best-picture nomination for “Wall-E,” from Walt Disney and its Pixar Animation unit, if not “The Dark Knight,” from Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures, might have done it. Even an acting nomination for Clint Eastwood, whose crusty appearance in “Gran Torino,” from Warner, turned out his biggest box office to date, would have helped.

Mickey Rourke’s failure to win Best Actor for THE WRESTLER was also a blow to the nerd contingent, but if you were a long-time Academy watcher, Sean Penn’s win for MILK would have come as no surprise, even in these indie-loving days. Rourke goes out as a gallant almost-was.

Speaking of Rourke and THE WRESTLER, the film’s bleak view of the life of the aging grappler was lauded as stunningly realistic by everyone we know who was ever in the biz, so here’s a couple of last links of interest. Former champ Bret Hart wrote about the movie and found it disturbing even while talking about his favorite subjects:

Pro wrestlers don’t have medical benefits, a pension plan, or a union. I’m not complaining. Wrestling has been very good to me, despite heart-wrenching disappointments, betrayals, and too many deaths to want to count any more—including my youngest brother, Owen, who fell to his demise from the rafters of an arena on a WWF pay-per-view during an ill-conceived stunt.

I was retired from the ring by an errant kick to the head, on live pay-per-view, which resulted in a concussion so brutal my doctor used the word hamburger to describe the back of my brain. That was followed by a stroke that paralyzed the entire left side of my body. Battling back was the toughest fight of my life by far, and, although I’m left with permanent effects, I’m grateful that when people meet me I can still measure up to their memory of the hero I’d long pretended to be. I still sign autographs all over the world and my fans still come out in droves. I’m humbled when they tell me, time and again, that my wrestling character inspired them in some way to make positive changes in their lives.

And just to end this on a happier note, the NYT profiles former champ Tito Santana, 55 and for once finds a semi-normal lifestyle:

Mr. Santana knew wrestlers like Mickey Rourke’s character, but he did not turn out that way. He has been married 27 years and is close to his sons. One’s a Princeton grad doing human rights work; another is about to graduate from law school; the youngest is finishing at James Madison University. The family lives in a handsome home here on three wooded acres atop a hill. He teaches Spanish at Eisenhower Middle School and coaches boys’ basketball, while his wife runs their hair salon, Santana’s. He is, in short, the antithesis of “The Wrestler.” Through the craziness of the pro circuit, he hung on to a set of values — family, education, frugality, hard work — that enabled him to reach middle age whole. This story doesn’t have the edginess to be a major motion picture coming soon to a theater near you. Battered middle-aged men may provide filmgoers with a much-needed catharsis. But if you’ve seen Mr. Rourke in “The Wrestler,” or Anthony Quinn in “Requiem for a Heavyweight,” or Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront” and wondered if they really coulda been somebody, the answer is: yes, Tito Santana.

San Francisco’s Wonder Con is the big event this weekend, along with Florida’s MegaCon, but there’s plenty of other comic events across the country all week long. Take a look!

Monday, February 23

Columbus, OH, 11 AM - 12:30 PM - Tara McPherson at CCAD

Illustrator Tara McPherson (FABLES: 1001 NIGHTS OF SNOWFALL) will present at Columbus College of Art & Design’s Canzani Center Auditorium.

Tuesday, February 24

New York, NY, 8 PM - Comic Book Club featuring C.B. Cebulski and Porter Mason

This week’s installment of the live comic book talk show at the Peoples’ Improv Theatre features writer C.B. Cebulski (EX INFERNUS) and Porter Mason (BASSIST WANTED). Admission is $5.

Wednesday, February 25

Mesa, AZ, 1 PM - 4 PM - Erik Larsen and Rob Liefeld at Atomic Comics

Image Comics co-founders Erik Larsen (SAVAGE DRAGON) and Rob Liefeld (YOUNGBLOOD) make a joint signing appearance at the Mesa branch of Atomic Comics to promote new issues of their comics featuring funny book sales juggernaut Barack Obama.

Wednesday, February 25

Berkeley, CA, 6 PM - 8 PM - Chris Giarrusso at Comic Relief

Cartoonist Chris Giarrusso will be signing at Berkeley retailer Comic Relief to celebrate the release of MINI MARVELS: SECRET INVASION, the newest digest featuring his cuddly send-ups of Marvel’s superheroes.

Friday, February 27

San Francisco, CA, 8 PM - 11 PM - Cartoon Art Museum’s WonderCon Weekend Party

The Cartoon Art Museum’s WonderCon party is also the opening reception for their exhibition featuring The Art of Stan Sakai: Celebrating 25 Years of USAGI YOJIMBO, which runs through July 5. Sakai will be a special guest at the party, along with WATCHMEN artist Dave Gibbons and other WonderCon featured artists. Admission is on a sliding scale from $10 to $35 dollars, with guests encouraged to contribute whatever they can to support the museum.

Saturday, February 28

New York, NY, 4:30 PM - Marjane Satrapi and Chris Ware at the Festival of New French Writing

Comics vanguards Marjane Satrapi (PERSEPOLIS) and Chris Ware (JIMMY CORRIGAN) will appear in conversation at New York’s Festival of New French Writing, which pairs French-speaking writers with relevant American authors for a series of moderated discussions. The festival is free and open to the public, and simultaneous translation in both languages will be available.

Posted by Aaron Humphrey

It’s the mother of all sales charts! Today’s must reading — and I do mean MUST — is retailer Brian Hibbs’s annual analysis of the year-end BookScan numbers for graphic novels sold in bookstores. The general trends show pieces down a tad, dollars up a bit, manga down but still ruling the roost, and DC’s distribution deal with Random House yielding SPECTACULAR results. It isn’t just the 300,000+ copies of WATCHMEN sold — it’s improvements all the way down the list of proven items. Looking at the numbers, it’s clear that Random House can’t save weak or misguided books, but it can significantly boost the sales of books with proven audiences.

Beyond that, you should just go read the whole thing, but a few caveats on the accuracy. Hibbs writes:

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One adage we live by here at Stately Beat Manor is that to win the office Oscar pool, you’ve got to get Best Short Film and Best Short Film (Animated). These obscure categories have been clogging up the Oscar® telecast with little known people in ill-fitting tuxes and inadvisable dresses for years, and while some think getting rid of them would shorten the telecast, we think you gotta keep the betting honest with something NO ONE knows about.

So as we have usually done over the past few years, here’s a guide to this year’s nominees in the Best Short Film (Animated) category. After reviewing the list, we feel confident that you’ll be one category closer to winning that pool.

(We don’t handicap the short films, but we should note that one of them — SPIELZEUGLAND (TOYLAND) — is about the Holocaust, and The Holocaust Always Wins Awards (see Reader, The.))

• La Maison en Petits Cubes by Kunio Kato

An old man stacks up boxes to avoid a flood. WE SAY: Poignant and haunting! Here’s a clip:

• LAVATORY - LOVESTORY by Konstantin Bronzit

In this simply animated entry, a homely bathroom cleaning lady finds romance in the stalls. While normally that is the kind of thing that gets you arrested and/or thrown out of the Senate, this is a cartoon we’re talking about. WE SAY: Touching!

No embeddable clips but if you wait long enough, one will come up here.

•OKTAPODI by Emud Mokhberi and Thierry Marchand
A cunning octopus embarks on a daring rescue when his love is taken out of the tank to be grilled with a bit of balsamic vinegar. WE SAY: The cute funny animals world of CGI animation has long cried out for invertebrate heroes! Watch below:

•PRESTO by Doug Sweetland
A magician wars with his rabbit over carrots and so on. WE SAY: This ran in front of WALL*E so millions and millions of people must have seen it. You saw it, right?

•THIS WAY UP by Alan Smith and Adam Foulkes
Two undertakers undergo comic misadventures as they head for the cemetery, WE SAY: Clever! Underexposed subject matter! A trailer:

AND THE WINNER IS: While La Maison en Petits Cubes has the poignant tone and innovative look that Oscar sometimes rewards, did we mention that PRESTO is from Pixar? And MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of people have seen it? Don’t bet against Pixar.

As regular readers of this blog know, as soon as the WATCHMEN movie was announced, we had only one pressing concern: Would Dr. Manhattan really be nude? Could America stand the sight of a giant, nuclear-powered, dimensionally challenged man who was so detached from humanity that he has actually forgone the need to wear underpants? Vulture breaks the shocking news that not only is Dr Manhattan really naked in WATCHMEN, but he now sports a large, circumcised dingus, unlike the small, uncut version in the comic. Says a spy:

There is indeed shitloads of blue wang. And it’s huge. In the comic book, it’s very average, and uncut, but the film is completely the opposite. Massive and circumcised. Given that it’s digital, was it [Billy] Crudup or his agent that insisted on the impressive cut cock?

Whereupon, Vulture gets all lit-crit:

In the graphic novel, Doctor Manhattan’s peen is modest and understated (do a Google Image Search), symbolizing the character’s impotence in the face of human evil. Adding inches to its length or circumference undermines everything Alan Moore was trying to say about politics, society, and the human condition. At this point, the best we can hope for is that Snyder was more faithful with respect to testicle size.

It makes you wonder about those official Dr. Manhattan condoms. Do they come in magnum?

Via Gavin Jasper

But…The circle of life!

Let’s take a closer look at the five books, shall we? And, by “take a closer look” I mean, of course, “second-guess” and “nitpick.”
— J. Caleb Mozzocco on the “After Watchmen” promotion from DC.

I remember summer!

Via Sleestak.

Now that we’ve all woken up, let’s talk meta. Let’s talk THE BLOGGING LIFE AND THE TOOLS THEREOF. The other day Marc-Oliver gave a nice shout out to dedicated daily bloggers, and highlighted Dirk’s truly ghastly schedule, which sometimes requires him to wake up at 10 pm. Ours isn’t that bad — for some reason our best hours for blogging are between midnight and 4ish, but we can’t do the vampire thing — we have to be up well before noon. We dunno how Tom does it, but once we were on a panel together and he said it took him an hour or so to do TCR, which, given his great powers of focus and discipline (which we lack), we can see.
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