Gareb Shamus has purchased another convention, the New England Con in Boston. According to the PR, it’s a 35-year-old show run by Larry Harrison, owner of Harrison’s Comics & Collectibles, and Jimmy Tournas and dates will be announced.

Given Shamus’s recent track record of aggressive competition with existing shows, it would seem the move to Boston enters a rather low-key market. But a Google check of the principals raises more questions than it answers.

A search for “new england comic con” and Larry Harrison yields almost no results. Dig around a little and you get a “North East Comicon” site run by Harrison’s Comics which looks to be a modest one-day hotel/dealer show set for January 10 with Ethan Van Sciver as a guest.

Adding to the confusion, there’s a listing for the Boston Comics Spectacular which announces

THE BOSTON COMIC SPECTACULAR IS NOW The New England Comic Con – Boston’s Longest running show gets a new promoter and a new name! http://www.necomiccon.com/ .

The Boston Comic Spectacular shows a previous event in September, again with Van Sciver.

There is also an existing Boston Comicon, with the next event set for April. The last one was held in October, to some local interest.

No matter what this show’s pedigree and provenance, it is NOT Shamus’s first foray into Beantown: A Wizard World Boston was held in 2005, to what most attendees thought was a very, very disappointing turnout. (At the time, the Sunday of the show was described to us as “The slowest day I’ve ever seen.”)  A second WW Boston, planned fro 2006, was canceled.

Is this going to be another battlefront in Con Wars? What event is Shamus going to plan THIS confab against? It could go up against the same weekend as Reed’s Pax East, also held in Boston, but Shamus already planned his own Toronto Comic-Con against that. DEVELOPING, Hell yeah! Complete PR in the jump.

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Gareb Shamus, CEO of New York based Wizard Entertainment, announces today that he has purchased New England Comic Con, in a move to further expand the Wizard World Comic Con tour.

“We’ve known Larry for many years, and his exceptional 35-year old New England Comic Con gets us into Boston in a big way. New England has a long legacy of cartoons and comics embedded in their history, making the fans there very appreciative of comics’ impact on society and pop culture,” said Shamus. “I’m excited to bring these discerning fans an even better Con experience and everything they expect from a Wizard run show.”

Larry Harrison, owner of Harrison’s Comics & Collectibles, and Jimmy Tournas, the former owners of New England Comic Con, will be intimately involved in the new show production to ensure fan favorite traditions are maintained.

“Working with Gareb is an awesome experience. The folks at Wizard World have a great sense of how to grow the show in a way that I’ve always wanted to see it flourish. This should be the best comic con the city of Boston has ever seen,” said Harrison.

The New England Comic Con acquisition is the first of several Comic Con tour expansion announcements expected in the weeks ahead.

“We bring together more fans, in more cities than anyone, to celebrate their passion for pop-culture. We’ve had such a strong positive fan and industry reaction to our new show launches that expanding the tour just made sense,” said Shamus.

New England Comic Con venue and dates will be announced soon.

Speaking of Kazu Kibuishi, he has a nice post up examining what the contributors to the anthology FLIGHT #1 have done in the five years since it came out. At the time, the fresh new cartoonists within were hailed as a new force in the industry — and they have mostly gone on to very productive careers in animation and comics. Kazu didn’t include last names, so they’ve been added:

7 out of 19 have worked on completed films, either as production designers or story artists:
- Enrico Casarosa (Ratatouille, Up)
- Jake Parker (Horton Hears a Who!)
- Vera Brosgol (Coraline)
- Khang Le (Monster House)
- Chris Appelhans (Monster House, City of Ember, Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox)
- Phil Craven (Kung Fu Panda, the forthcoming Kung Fu Panda 2)
- Clio Chiang (the forthcoming Princess and the Frog)

11 out of 19 have published one or more graphic novels (or will have a graphic novel published in 2010):

- Enrico Casarosa (The Venice Chronicles)
- Kazu Kibuishi (Daisy Kutter, Amulet, the forthcoming Copper collection)
- Jake Parker (Missile Mouse, forthcoming Scholastic GNs)
- Vera Brosgol (forthcoming First Second GN)
- Jen Wang (forthcoming First Second GN)
- Neil Babra (Hamlet)
- Bengal (Meka, Naja)
- Dylan Meconis (Wire Mothers: Harry Harlow and the Science of Love, Bite Me!)
- Derek Kirk Kim (Good as Lily, The Eternal Smile)
- Rad Sechrist (Tom Sawyer)
- Kean Soo (Jellaby)

It’s certainly an impressive body of work — especially where comics for kids are concerned. But as Kazu notes, it perhaps wasn’t as much a movement as some very talented people who came together. And of the 12 who had webcomics running at the time, only 3 do now.

§ Tucker Stone is at it again.

§ Is someone making a book of Stan Lee’s tweets? They should.

The reason I always say “good night” is I don’t want you staying up for hours denying yourself sleep, desperately waiting for my next tweet

§ Jog examines the ORIGINAL Astro Boy.

§ Cartoonist Berkeley Breathed is also doing the happy dance that there will be no 20000 Leagues remake.

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• Option watch: Mandalay Pictures has picked up UNTHINKABLE by author Mark Sable and artist Julian Totino Tedesco. The book is published by BOOM!. Ross Richie and Andrew Cosby will produce, along with Mandalay’s Peter Gruber and Cathy Schulman.

Created and written by Mark Sable, “Unthinkable” centers on a brilliant man who was recruited just after 9/11 into a government think tank consisting of America’s most imaginative minds and tasked with dreaming up wild scenarios for possible attacks on U.S. soil. Years after the think tank was disbanded, the attacks the man concocted begin to occur, and he becomes the only one who can stop them. But the government has become his pursuer.

UNTHINKABLE gained a bit of notoriety earlier this year when Sable was detained at LAX after authorities found one of the scripts for the book.
• Meanwhile, Aurora has optioned Platinum’s NIGHTFALL by Scott O. Brown and Ferran Xalabarder. The story concerns a man in a prison full of vampires. Has anyone ever seen a copy of this comic?
• Warren Ellis’s GLOBAL FREQUENCY — a 12 issue maxiseries about eh covert operations that battles other covert operations– has already been the subject of a TV pilot, spearheaded by John Rogers and starring Michele Forbes. Although well received by those who saw it, it was never picked up, some say because of anger over the pilot being leaked onto bit torrent sites. (It seems like this would pass for valuable pre-awareness these days.) But someone is trying it again, Ellis writes:

The CW will again try to adapt Warren Ellis’ comic book “Global Frequency,” this time Scott Nimerfro will script the pilot.

Does this count as a remake?

• Idris Elba, lately of THE LOSERS, will play Heimdall in the Thor movie. We did not know Elba was Norse but welcome his participation.

At Fourth Letter, Esther Inglis-Arkell becomes enraged by female comics characters who stand around and explain why they wear skimpy costumes.

And I heard the justification about how Canary’s outfit was in tribute to her mother, even when that means she’s in panties and a jacket in the First Wave books. And I’ve heard the one about Poison Ivy being a plant and therefore unconcerned about human modesty. Oh, and I’ve heard the one about Supergirl being invulnerable and therefore not needing pants. There are a few about how Huntress wanted to show off the fact that she was shot, and she lived, and that’s why she fought in a bikini. And then there’s the one about Batman and Superman . . . oh. Wait. There aren’t that many excuses for how Batman and Superman dress because, golly, for some reason, the male heroes in this mostly male-controlled medium put their fucking clothes on when they’re going to fight someone.

UPDATE: J. Caleb Mozzocco also covers this:

I can’t disagree with anything she said in her post; she’s dead-on right. If I had anything to add, it would be that the writer’s doing the justification of the costumes almost never have any real control over those costumes, and probably think they’re doing something valuable by finding a reason for explaining a costuming choice that sounds better than “Some guy 20-65 years ago though this was totally hot, and wondered if his editors would let him get away with it.” (That doesn’t make it any less irritating though, especially for a character like Power Girl, who is given explanation after explanation for her cleavage window. The first one of these speeches you read is never as annoying as the second, third or fifth).

We wouldn’t be brining this up so soon after our Brokeback posting series except that, as jaded as we were, even The Beat was dazed by the speed with which the “But men are sexualized too!’ and the other bingo card justifications came out.
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Via Josh Neufeld.

Archie gets an art exhibit tonight at MoCCA in a show that runs through February:

Welcome to Riverdale! Join the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art - MoCCA in celebrating the world of Archie Comics, one of the oldest and most beloved family-friendly brands in the comic book industry. Thrill to the exploits of Archie Andrews and his friends, Betty, Veronica, Jughead, Reggie and the rest. And don’t be surprised if you see a cameo from Josie and the Pussycats, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and some of Archie Comics’ other supporting players. This exhibition features pages and pages of rare and unpublished comic art, animated cartoons, gold record winning music, as well as vintage house ads, news clippings, custom collectibles, toys and other merchandise from Archie’s 65 plus years as America’s eternal teenager.

November 19, 2009-February 28, 2010
Opening Reception: November 19, 7-9PM

For more info.

Now through Sunday it’s the Thought Bubble Festival in Leeds, a four-day fest of all things comical, with a one-day comics show on Saturday. The complete schedule is here with a full plate of screenings, workshops, and panels. The graphically stunning but uncopyable guest list is here — suffice to say it includes all your UK faves like Bryan Talbot and Andy Diggle and foreign stars such as Ben Templesmith and Alex Maleev.

We linked to this interview with organizer Lisa Wood yesterday. It sounds like a great way to spend a few days.

Even as our previous story on the Jessamine County Library LoEG controversy was getting Boing Boinged — on Alan Moore’s birthday no less — and stirring up a whole new round of observations, events were heating up at a library board meeting, as reported by Amy Wilson. And this time, we even got the money shot of an evangelist angrily holding up a comic and yelling “If this is not pornography, what is?”

The library board heard speakers — limited to two minutes each — on both sides of the case, which involves two library workers who felt that LOEG: BLACK DOSSIER should not fall into the hands of an 11-year-old girl and took it upon themselves to remove the book from circulation, thereby violating library policy and getting themselves fired. Although the traveling evangelist, a homeschooling mother and over 200 kids who signed a petition begging for books to be censored all seemed to think that others should decide what they can read, the other half of the speakers felt, as Bobbi Stout, herself the daughter of a preacher, that “It’s dangerous to democracy when an interest group imposes its views on another,” she said. “Stand up for the Constitution.”
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§ Bully salutes Spider-Ham, perhaps the only Marvel character whose design was inspired by Terrytoons.

§ As promised in our comment section, Shaun Manning interviews Gilbert Hernandez about TROUBLEMAKERS, his new book:

All of Hernandez’ characters, though, share the thrillseeker mentality. “Each person in the story only knows that getting away with something works better than earning it honestly,” the artist said. “The 4 main characters are attractive people, for the most part, but they are drawn to shady doings because it turns them on. This type of immaturity is glorified everywhere you look, so why work a 9 to 5 job? Fritz’s character brings up the obvious question of ‘Why doesn’t she just marry a rich guy?’ Because she would get bored right away. She’s the type of person I like to compare to ‘monkeys with dynamite.’”

§ Kristy Valenti investigates the work of Frank Tashlin, whose body of work goes far beyond directing CINDERFELLA.

Tashlin also wrote and drew three children’s books that could easily function as graphic novels for adults today: The Bear That Wasn’t (1946) The Possum that Didn’t (1950) and The World That Isn’t (1951). Two of these, The Bear That Wasn’t and The World That Isn’t, were hiding inside library binding at my local branch.[4] The World That Isn’t is a satiric, rise,-fall,-and-rise-again-of-man story, of the type that cartoonists still do today. Its pen-and-ink lines are controlled, flattened and simplified, with occasional tight curlicues.

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With Kitty Pryde as Bella.

We enjoyed this video AND the ad for ZORRO DVDs that ran before it!

Careful observers may have noticed that The Beat’s scheduling has been a bit erratic of late. Apologies for the lack of Morning Beat for those of you in the Eastern and Central time zones. We’ve actually been working on some big stuff behind the scenes, which is time- and attention-consuming. That and a messed up sleeping schedule and too much Desktop Tower Defense. God forbid we ever get a PS3 like FMB keeps threatening. You will never ever see us again, and Torsten will have to take over this blog.

We are also once again way behind on answering emails. AND as long as we’ve got your attention (I wish!), anyone who is using our old old AOL email address should switch to our current Gmail one. ALSO, we don’t customarily use Facebook for business communiques — believe it or not an email to our Gmail account, as backed up as it may be, is still the most effective way to reach The Beat.

BTW, how cool is this cover, especially the haphazard way the artist threw that hand behind the cloud. Talk about burying the lede!

Melinda Gebbie, Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell and his wife Anne, out and about in Northampton, UK.
Via Campbell’s blog.:

Chris Oliveros announces a new edition of Matthew Forsythe’s OJINGOGO. We need more of this!

§ Shouldn’t we just run a feed of Comics Comics here since we link to almost EVERY post? Anyway, Dan Nadel shares the contents of his mental desk drawer, including a contemplation of George Wunder, (above).

Where are all the letters and such? Where are the diary entries that explain his inky grotesques? He had a way of depicting giant craniums that verges on abstraction. Wonderful, odd stuff. But who was he? Caniff we know, right down to his shoes. But Wunder? I dunno. Wood assisted him at one point, I know that. And he apparently was in the military sometime. But what else? Ah well.

Wunder was the artist tasked with the thankless job of working on Terry and the Pirates after Milton Caniff left the strip for Steve Canyon, which he had more ownership stake in. Now, while Wunder is no Caniff, there is undeniably something obsessive and compelling about his dense, near grotesque art as well. Nowadays, it’s not hard to see Wunder doing some kind of indie book for Fantagraphics with that kind of style.

§ Also at Comics Comics a roundtable discussion of Al Columbia’s deeply disturbing PIM & FRANCIE kicks off.

§ This week in PW Comics Week!

•The Beat talked to Nick Barrucci about Dynamite Entertainment’s last five years.

•Terri Herd talked to Jim Salicrup about the Wimpy Dead Kid.

• And Evie Nagy found out what Paul Pope did in the new issue of Royal Flush that was so filthy it had to be polybagged.

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Just to follow up on the earlier post about how only one movie in the top 20 highest grossing films of the Aughts was based on an original idea, lets check out the ’90s to see how they compare. Original stories are in RED.

1 Titanic — ORIGINAL
2 Star Wars - Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace — Sequel
3 Jurassic Park - Novel
4 Forrest Gump - Novel
5 The Lion King — ORIGIINAL (sorta)
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