§ Calvin Reid reports that Tor.com is acquiring graphic novels for online publication. First up, books by Dan Goldman and Jim Ottaviani.

The two works are The Imitation Game, a biography of mathematician Alan Turing by comics writer and science biographer Jim Ottaviani and artist Leland Purvis; and Red Light Properties by Dan Goldman, described as a “paranormal real estate tale” by literary agent Bob Mecoy of Creative Book Services, who represents all the creators and negotiated the deal on their behalf.

§ It looks like Sandy Bilus is the new Dick Hyacinth, as he plans to compile a Best Comics of 2009 Meta-List. Send him links to lists.

§ The FINAL final YALSA Best Graphic Novels for Teens nominations list has been posted.
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Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff has been much in the forefront of the acceptance of comics and graphic novels as part of the new dialog of ideas. He made a splash in comics with his Biblical deconstruction, TESTAMENT. Now he’s back with X, a graphic novel being serialized online by game studio Smoking Gun. The first episode — of four — can be read here, but a few pages were made available for preview, below. The story is illustrated by Smoking Gun’s lead concept artist, Cheoljoo Lee, and Younger Yang. Rushkoff has been working with Smoking Gun, whose founders worked on such games as Company of Heroes, and the GN is set in the universe of an upcoming but still undisclosed franchise — so yes, it’s all about transmedia, according to a press release:

“One of our main goals as a studio is to constantly innovate in how we tell our stories”, said Smoking Gun CEO and Creative Director John Johnson. “Our perspective is, if you can interact with it, then it can be part of the experience we deliver. And if you cannot interact with it, then we will evolve it to the point where it can be part of our universe. There are no boundaries to where we can go or what we can accomplish.”

“It has been insanely challenging and insanely fun to dive head-first into Smoking Gun’s universe,” explained Douglas Rushkoff. “And while I work on threading one narrative through this material, other artists are building it out on many other levels, all at once, for different people to engage with in so many different ways.  So for the audience this multi-faceted, multi-media approach brings new dimension to the epic struggle that we’re talking about here: nothing short of how humanity defines itself.” 

No biography of Patrick McGoohan is complete without mentioning THE THREE LIVES OF THOMASINA, and The Beat is no exception. The movie was on Hallmark the other day. We DVR’d for later viewing and, wow, was this full of surprises. A movie about a lovable tot who dresses her kitty in a bonnet? Yes, but also, in the Disney tradition, a gut-wrenching exploration of what happens when beloved pets die! Crying, tantrums, turning against family. I have vague memories of watching this movie as a kid and the scenes of Mary and [SPOILER] her dead cat must have turned me into a quivering puddle.

Everyone mentions how good McGoohan, Susan Hampshire and future Poppins poppets Karen Dotrice and Matthew Garber are, but my praise is reserved for Thomasina herself. This cat is the Meryl Streep of feline thespians — no kitty has ever displayed such range on film. Plus technically, it’s a marvel. There are goddam TRACKING SHOTS of the cat! Running out a door and up a tree; sneaking through a market, looking to see if anyone is around, then darting forward to grab a tasty fish! How in the hell did they do it?

There are some signs that this may have been a pre-Humane Society approved film. I don’t want to know how they did shots of Thomasina falling through limbo over and over, claws splayed, hind legs twisting. Or how she stayed so docile while wearing a bonnet, sitting in a baby carriage and talking to a German shepherd. Cats are notoriously difficult to work with on film, part of the reason there are so few of them in cinema, at least compared to dogs. Cats had to wait for YouTube to come along to become the stars they were always meant to be.

Thomasina also rectifies (along with THAT DARN CAT! and the rather feeble ARISTOCATS) Disney’s anti-cat bias that really only ended with THE LION KING. Figaro aside, cats in Disney films were usually sneaky, tricky and awful — Lucifer, Si and Am, the Cheshire Cat.

Except for Bagheera. He was cool.

There is much else to love here — rugged Scottish scenery creatively used in matte shots, English actors who show they are Scottish by saying “Aye” and “Och” every once in a while; a scene where a child wrestles a wounded badger into a blanket. And did we mention Patrick McGoohan in jodhpurs? Anyway if you are looking for a well shot family film that will first sadden the shit out of, then delight your children, THE THREE LIVES OF THOMASINA should do the trick.

Let’s just keep this Art Day here at Stately Beat Manor. Here’s a preview of Marvel’s STRANGE TALES #3, on sale TOMORROW, with an EXCLUSIVE page from Jeffrey Brown and two pages from Paul Hornschemeier’s Nightcrawler tale.

This is not comics, too, but we’re all big Pixar fans here, right??? Plus one detects perhaps a bit of influence from some of our favorite Pixar-based cartoonists here, as well.

UPDATE: Artist Paul Conrad writes to give credits —

Eric Tan did the “Journey into the Wild” (with the dogs).

Craig Foster did the SAA South American Air (with the Lama).

Erik Evans did the “Paradise Falls” (with the bird).

I did the rest.

There’s more on the posters at Conrad’s blog.

Also, we’re trying to find out if they are for sale, but apparently they were just sent out as files to websites as promo. If we find out any more, we’ll let ya know!

Anyway to celebrate the release of UP on DVD and Blu-Ray, Pixar has released a series of retro posters. Click for larger images.

The insanely talented Brendan McCarthy is writing and drawing aDr. Strange series for Marvel’s Marvel Knights imprint, to be entitled FEVER. McCarthy and Steve Cook will collaborate on the coloring. Here’s a test promo for the series.

This link has been making the rounds and it’s Not Comics, but it’s so worth a look: Soviet War Paintings. To the horrors of war, you can add cold, bleak, brutal images rendered in rigid, propagandistic art styles.

Tonight at 6:30 PM, four of New York’s best political cartoonists, Eric Drooker (FLOOD, BLOOD SONG), Tom Hart (HUTCH OWEN), Tim Kreider (THE PAIN), and Peter Kuper (SPY VS SPY, STICKS AND STONES), will discuss the historical and ongoing conversation between political cartoons, New York City, and the public in a panel discussion with Bill Kartalopoulos at the NY Center for Independent Publishing. Admission is $15 for adults, $10 for members and $5 for students, and tickets are available online.

Posted by Aaron Humphrey.

Looks like four-day passes for NEXT YEAR’s San Diego Comic-Con are selling out pretty quickly.

Honestly, this is just…INSANE. At this rate, the show is going to be sold out six months ahead of time. It really is like a concert or sporting event now.

Publishers Weekly has published its Best Books of 2009 list and David Small’s STITCHES was named one of the Top Ten books OVERALL. There is also a Best 11 graphic novels:

Parker: The Hunter, Darwyn Cooke and Richard Stark (IDW)
Driven by Lemons, Josh Cotter (AdHouse)
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth,Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou with art by Alecos Papdatos and Annie Di Donna (Bloomsbury)
The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders, Emmanuel Guibert and Didier Lefèvre (First Second)
Asterios Polyp, David Mazzucchelli (Pantheon)
Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni Press)
Footnotes in Gaza, Joe Sacco (Metropolitan)
A Drifting Life, Yoshihiro Tatsumi (D&Q)
You’ll Never Know: A Good and Decent Man, Carol Tyler (Fantagraphics)
Pluto, Naoki Urasawa (Viz Media)

Amazon has also listed its Best of 2009:

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Busy Kiel Phegley talks to Gary Groth, Michael Dean, and Kristy Valenti about the digital future of The Comics Journal. Among the very good news: Shaenon Garrity, Robert Clough, and the Hooded Utilitarians gang of Noah Berlatsky and Ng Suat Tong will be contributing, as will R. Fiore and Kenneth Smith. Groth has more on the overall vision:

Groth: I see this is an opportunity to create a true web version of “The Comics Journal,” to in effect combine the virtues of both the web and print as I understand them, which is to say, a single “place” where readers can come and expect a consistently intelligent, idiosyncratic, combative, and occasionally clashing conversation about comics and cartooning. Over the past few years I’ve noticed smarter critical commentary on the Net, but it’s scattered all over the place, buried in the usual mountain of frivolous, tepid, dimwitted, unreadable fanboy drivel. There’s no single website you can visit and anticipate a range of interesting sensibilities on an equal footing, so one of my goals is to distill the best criticism and journalism we can into a single site.

ALSO, Jeet Heer looks at TCJ’s better qualities:

The strength of the magazine is in presenting essays that have a depth of analysis that can’t be found elsewhere. Most writing on comics tends to suffer from a shortness of breath: small reviews and bite-size blog postings. The Journal, at its best, doesn’t settle for such small snacks but offers a full-course meal.

Among its reviewers the Journal has a contingent of solid, trust-worthy writers: Kent Worcester, Rich Kreiner, Shaenon Garrity, and Kristian Williams, but they tend to get drowned out by crankier and less-informed critics, writers who mistake abrasiveness for insight. The magazine’s review section does seem too diffuse and scattershot. I’m never quite sure why some books get reviewed and others don’t. There’s a lot of good critics on the web now – Rob Clough comes to mind right way. The most promising prospect for the next incarnation of the Journal is to recruit these writers (I know Clough has already signed on).

R. Crumb’s appearance at Virginia Commonwealth University last week has led to a campus controversy, with his comments on rape and misogyny igniting complaints from students and statements from officials:

Timothy Patterson, a Richmond College senior, cited a quote from Crumb’s speech in his response to The Collegian: “Every woman has a rape fantasy. Every man deep down…hates women.”

Andrew F. Newcomb, dean of the school of arts and sciences, sent a campus-wide e-mail on Nov. 1, stating that although the university made Crumb’s dialogue possible, it doesn’t mean it condoned the dialogue’s content.

At the heart of the controversy is associate professor Bertram Ashe, who assigned the Crumb documentary and his short story, “My Troubles with Women”, as part of his class American Misfit: Geek Literature and Culture. Patterson questioned Ashe’s right to assign such material, while Ashe responded at length:

If Patterson had come to talk to me I would have shared with him that I, too, was offended by aspects of Crumb’s work. I would have showed him where and how Crumb grapples with feminist critiques of his work right there inside his work. I would have demonstrated for him how well the text fits into our semester-long discussion of geeks and nerds. I also would have shared with him the fact that I routinely assign edgy and provocative texts that have the potential to offend students. For more evidence, just ask students in both sections of the 20th Century American Fiction class I’m teaching this semester. Or ask students in my Blackface seminar last spring (a course I’ll be teaching again next spring). “Edgy and provocative is what I do, Mr. Patterson,” I would have said, and yes, academic freedom protects me.

Although Crumb’s early track record is of, well, trouble with women, his new version of Genesis draws heavily on Feminist Bible scholars, particularly Sarah Teubal, and the struggle between patriarchal forces and a presumed more matriarchal Goddess culture. Jewish Week examines this aspect of Genesis and finds some dissension even among scholars.

Still, by citing the work of scholars to buttress his claims of textual accuracy, Crumb invites questions about his own credibility. And many feminist scholars hold Crumb’s sources at a critical distance.  “My own view is that the Teubal book is admirable in attempting to recover positive aspects of women’s lives in biblical antiquity but flawed in its assumptions about the historicity of the ancestors,” said Carol Meyers, a leading feminist biblical scholar at Duke University, in an e-mail response. By historicity, she meant knowing conclusively the realities of life in biblical times.

If we had to guess, we’d imagine that when actor-musician-model Tyrese Gibson wanted to join the infectiously lively world of graphic novels, he wasn’t aware that part of this world is nitpicking bloggers, commentators and message board fans who fact check every utterance. But in a long interview at CBR, he and collaborator Mike Le address some of the complaints over quotes and talk about the future of MAYHEM. Specifically, Gibson refutes previously quoted claims that MAYHEM was the first comic for iTunes, which, as we all know, isn’t so.

Tyrese: That’s a misquote. The reporter misunderstood what I said. What I said and what I meant was this is the first time in history that Apple has teamed up with a creator to develop a digital comic book for iTunes. I know there have been many digital comic books way before “Mayhem,” and I am aware of other digital comic books that have been sold on iTunes.

In another quote, Gibson shows he understands multichannel delivery:

Tyrese: Let me say this, I strongly hope the digital sales drive consumers to discover comic books, which then drives them to their local comic book stores to buy more comic books. Digital comic books do not have to mean the death of printed comic books. I believe they can co-exist and help each other thrive. In this recession, anything that can help bring more traffic to comic book stores is a blessing.

Over the summer watching the MAYHEM experiment was vastly entertaining, and it’s safe to say the program had some pluses, but also pissed off a lot of people with, to put it mildly, over-aggressive marketing tactics. The bottom line is that quality was not one of the big selling points of the project, unfortunately, and what really fuels repeat business is a good story. However, it’s good to see Tyrese & Co. addressing some of the issues they raised. And their teaming with Apple is part of the Jobs Crew’s greater recognition that comics are a major part of the future business model for digital downloads.

Somewhat related: for the first time book app downloads have surpassed game app downloads for the iPhone:

In October, one out of every five new apps launching in the iPhone has been a book. Book publishers from Your Mobile Apps to Softbank are adapting books for sale in the AppStore at record rates. Flurry believes that Apple is poised to take market share from the Amazon Kindle in eBooks, in spite of the iPhone’s smaller four-inch display compared to the Kindle’s six-inch display. If Apple is actually working on a larger tablet, as rumored, it could steal even more market share.

Hurry Tablet!!!

§ While we were poking around artist Tom Fowler’s website for Halloween, we found this cartoon which portrays writer Jeff Parker and nicely sums up some of the differing stresses of creating comics. As for why Parker is an alligator…you’ll just have to read the link.

§ Imagine one of the world’s greatest cities hosting a series of events starring the world’s greatest cartoonists, put together one one of the world’s greatest comics scholars. That’s London’s Comica. Paul Gravett has more.

Because too much is happening, comics are too vibrant to limit them to one festival a year, even one that’s grown from ten days to three weeks. With the year-round flexibility of Comica events, we can welcome major guests whenever they can make it to London, from Art Spiegelman and Marjane Satrapi to Alan Moore and Joe Sacco, only a few weeks ago, to a packed house, and Daniel Clowes lined up for next spring.

[snip]To treat comics as a totally valid contemporary artform, to show where the medium is heading right now locally and internationally, and how comics can interconnect with every other artform. In many ways, the aims, the mission, of Comica are in sync with what Peter Stanbury and I envisaged when we used to co-publish Escape Magazine back in the 1980s - to escape, to break out from narrow definitions and formulas, to liberate comics to be anything they want and everything they can be. That’s why we’ve put Spiegelman together with Philip Pullman, Posy Simmonds with Ian McEwan, Moore & Gebbie with Stewart Lee - or this year Logicomix author Apostolos Doxiadis with Marcus de Sautoy and Ben Templesmith with Philip Ridley. And Comica hosts the best, from whatever field of comics, from Japanese comics, with Junko Mizuno, to American superheroes, like Alex Maleev last year and Cameron Stewart this year - quality is there in every sector of this medium.

§ Jon Gutierrez explores the original Astro Boy story a tale of abandonment and abuse, themes which, unsurprisingly, the under-performing CGI remake did not grapple with.

§ Hero Complex reports on a current show comparing Indian myth to superheroes.

§ Jameson Steed at the Daily Titan captures industry thoughts on SDCC’s pricing and early Preview Night sellout.

§ Mania.com digs up more info on Fabio’s THOR

The most important thing to establish up front was that this was not a Marvel movie. Kersley had concocted the idea for the film with Fabio and animation writer Henry Gilroy (’Clone Wars’), and based their story on Norse myth. However, they clearly borrowed two elements from the Marvel version: Thor would share his Earthly existence with a human (in this case a young boy) and he would have long blond hair. Mythology mavens know that Thor is traditionally depicted with red hair.

There are about a billion comics/Halloween photos up on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere, but we’ll just steal two.

Marion Vitus

Tom Neely

In trends, we noticed that ORIGINAL STAR TREK costumes far, far, far outnumbered STAR WARS costumes, a demographic shift showing that this year’s movie definitely did the job of making TREK cool and fun again.

A shocking connection…

Okay it’s not a comics, but nothing has influenced the imagery of Halloween more than James Whale’s classic, so let’s give it up for the king.

And with that, we’re off to Trick or Treat

!

The Invisible Man

Aw, come on, did you think iI was gonna leave out Bruce Campbell?

Does anything signify contemporary terror in comics more than this series? Cover by Charles Adlard.

More here

The great Jim Woodring is always available for some chills. Wish this one was larger. Here’s a bonus image.

Much more here.

The OG

…and a slightly more horrifying version