New York Magazine rounds up The Top Ten Graphic Novels for its 2008 Culture Awards, led by DISAPPEARANCE DIARY by Hideo Azuma.
Meanwhile, Dustin Harbin presents his own delightful Top Ten, led by GUS AND HIS GANG, by Chris Blain.
§ Sweet. Designer/publisher Francoise Mouly recalls how she met future husband Art Spiegelman:
One year, I unexpectedly got a call from one of my acquaintances, the cartoonist Art Spiegelman, who had himself recently moved back to New York. He asked me if I had any plans for Thanksgiving, and I asked in return, “What is Thanksgiving?” We made plans to go to Chinatown for duck dinner that Thursday night. During dinner, Art — delighted to have found someone even more alienated than himself — enjoyed filling me in on all the details of the American custom: cranberry? What is cranberry? (There are none in France.) Sweet potatoes? Pumpkin pie??? After dinner, he invited me back to his place where he showed me his collection of comics (we have that pick-up line in French, but it’s usually “let me show you my collection of Japanese prints…”)
§ Scott Mendelson makes A Comparative Study of all three Punisher films at the Huffington Post:
In this current age of rebooting one comic franchise or horror franchise after another, it is still something of a milestone that we have a single property, The Punisher, that has been rebooted twice in just four years by the same studio. Add that to the fact that the DVD version of the first go at it, nearly twenty years ago, was released by Artisan, which was eventually folded up into the very studio that has continually tried to reboot the property. Thus, we know have three distinct Punisher movies, all either originally financed or currently owned by Lionsgate. Let us take a moment to look at all three films (in their original R-rated cuts), in the context of each other. Obligatory spoiler warning for all three pictures…
§ Domingos Isabelinho, the fiercest critic of them all, finds current comics criticism pretty damned lame. .
§ Photos from last week’s Comic Book Legal Defense Fund Holiday Party. Above, the newest New Yorker! blogger, Whitney Matheson, and cartoonist Paul Pope.
§ Tom Spurgeon suggests that the prevalence of old farts like me may be a plus for the comics industry
§ Valerie D’Orazio reveals that the silly feud between her and Tony Lee that had been raging between their blogs was a HOAX:
Yep. Me and Tony conceived of this whole back-and-forth as a spoof on Comic Book Internet Feuds™. Additional inspiration, for me, was the Daily Show/Conan/Colbert feuds from a couple of months ago. We tried to be extremely tongue-and-cheek about it, so it would be more or less obvious. Then Mr. Lee emailed me shortly thereafter to let me know he was taking on quite a pummeling, and it was decided to make this short.
It was indeed tongue-in-cheek and lacked credibility. Real internet feuds go something like this:
Feuder #1: Feuder #2 is an asshole.
Feuder #2: Feuder #1 is an ass hat.
..and so on.
As you’ve probably heard by now, famed fetish model Bettie Page is in a coma after suffering a heart attack. Page, 85, gained fame in the ’50s as one of the most popular models in the girlie mag world, but dropped out of sight in the ’60s, becoming a figure of mystery until artists —most notably the late Dave Stevens— reintroduced her to a world where her somehow innocent frolicking seemed a welcome respite from even more explicit content.
Although Page disappeared in the ’60s, becoming a born again Christian and renouncing her previous modeling, she eventually resurfaced in the ’90s, and in 2003 was photographed for the first time in 40 years. In general, she preferred to not be shown during interviews, wanting “to be remembered as she was.”
We certainly do. And we send her our best wishes.
Soulcraft Comics is a small comics publisher that has several properties coming out in the next year or so. (Full disclosure: Future Mr. Beat is working on one of them.) They’ve been serializing their first title, TRIBES: THE DOG YEARS, with art by Inaki Miranda, on the website prior to publication next year.
Miranda is probably best known as the artist of the Minx title BURN OUT, but the TRIBES stuff shows some beautifully atmospheric concept art and storytelling, as well.
We’re hearing chatter about major layoffs at McFarlane Toys today, as many as a dozen people. More as it becomes available.
Also, Anjali Singh, the editor who acquired PERSEPOLIS and EPILEPTIC for Pantheon before moving on to Houghton Mifflin, was one of those let go last week in HMH’s housecleaning.
In addition, at the MTV Comics and movie blog, Splash Page, co-editor Casey Seijas was let go as part of Viacom’s 850 person bloodbath last week; apparently he will be staying on as a freelancer. The other editor, Rick Marshall, and the blog itself, survived the purge.
By Paul O’Brien
It’s a quiet October. SECRET INVASION continues into its seventh month. Just think, when the crossover began, Hillary Clinton was still campaigning for President…
The biggest new title of the month was ASTONISHING X-MEN: GHOST BOXES, and there’s also the “Original Sin” crossover between X-MEN: LEGACY and WOLVERINE: ORIGINS. And, er, that’s pretty much it - there are some new miniseries further down the charts, but otherwise, it’s a month of business as usual.
Unsurprisingly, Marvel’s huge market share in September was a blip. DC shipped their major titles in October, so the market shares are back to more normal levels. Marvel led DC by 45% to 33% in unit share, and 39% to 32% in dollar share.
The bottom end of the chart is unusually strong this month. The number 300 book - UNCLE SCROOGE #380 - has estimated sales of 4,230. That means some of Marvel’s lower-selling titles missed the charts entirely: ODYSSEY #2, THREE MUSKETEERS #5, MARVEL ADVENTURES HULK #16, MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #41 and HULK CHRONICLES #4. Bear in mind, also, that we’ll be missing any re-orders below that point.
Thanks as always to Milton Griepp and ICV2 for permission to use their figures for these calculations.
1. SECRET INVASION
04/08 Secret Invasion #1 of 8 - 272,195
05/08 Secret Invasion #2 of 8 - 197,685 (-27.4%)
06/08 Secret Invasion #3 of 8 - 186,533 ( -5.6%)
07/08 Secret Invasion #4 of 8 - 175,469 ( -5.9%)
08/08 Secret Invasion #5 of 8 - 165,958 ( -5.4%)
09/09 Secret Invasion #6 of 8 - 169,440 ( +2.1%)
10/09 Secret Invasion #7 of 8 - 154,675 ( -8.7%)
6 mnth (-43.2%)
Still holding up well as the lynchpin of Marvel’s superhero books. Last month’s rise was a blip because of the Baltimore Con Variant making the charts, but the general trend is a steady drift downwards. For an eight-issue mini, that’s fine.
Read the rest of this entry »
Oh no! Soon you will see another beloved comics character as you have never seen him before! That never happened before, either! But it’s not who you think! And we’re not done using exclamation marks!
It’s Salem the cat, Sabrina’s loyal companion from years of Archie Comics!
This March, Salem goes from sidekick to main attraction in a story that kicks off a four-part miniseries-within-a-series starting in SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH #101: “YOUNG SALEM”! Only this time, this cool cat isn’t a cat at all!
In SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH #93 and #94, Salem’s backstory was explored in the two-part “Salem’s Secret.” That story highlighted a secret which linked Salem to Sabrina in an unexpected way, and explored the repercussions that followed…repercussions which affected everyone in the Magic Realm.
Now, Salem’s early days are explored once more in a special four-issue tale which harkens back to the days when he wasn’t an enchanted feline, but an actual boy wizard! That’s right: in this special storyline we take you back…way back…to when Salem was a little boy! Years later, an ill-conceived plot by Salem will incur the wrath of the leaders of the Magic Realm and lead to his enchanted punishment of spending the rest of his life as a furry feline. The magic begins in SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH #101 and continues through issue #104.
Frankly we’re surprised this story wasn’t called “Final Salem” or “Secret Salem” or “Salem Crisis” or some other catchy title. Archie Comics’s efforts to tell the story in four issues also strike us as insufficient. Why could this tale have not been expanded to a company-wide crossover? You’ve got to think big these days.
The Hollywood Reporter reports that Fables may just be a new TV show for ABC. Bill Willingham’s popular tale of fairy tale characters trying to make it in the modern world would seem to be a natural for serial TV. Six Degrees creators/executive producers Stu Zicherman and Raven Metzner are writing the hour-long pilot, which is being produced by Warner Bros. TV. David Semel, who directed the Heroes pilot, will direct.
Zicherman and Metzner wouldn’t elaborate which fairy tale characters will be featured in the TV series, but noted,
“We set up a structure to allow any fairy tale character to show up in any one episode,” Metzner said.
The fairy tale characters will keep some of their trademark characteristics. For instance, Prince Charming will be handsome, while Big Bad Wolf will have to shave a four-day shadow from growing back every day.
But overall, “they are just like real people in the real world who live and breathe and look just like you and me,” Metzner said.
Once again, it’s another week full of scintillating comics events. Here’s the rundown:
Tuesday, December 9
Ketchum, ID, 7 PM - Michael Chabon at the Sun Valley Center
Author and celebrity comics nerd Michael Chabon (THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY) will present a lecture on why super heros wear costumes, a topic he pondered earlier this year in The New Yorker. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased online.
Tuesday, December 9
Montreal, QC, 7:30 PM - KRAMERS ERGOT 7 at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly
The crew behind the plus-sized anthology KRAMERS ERGOT 7 will make their first stop of the week at Drawn & Quarterly’s bookstore. Contributors at this signing will be Shary Boyle, C.F., Sammy Harkham, Kevin Huizenga, John Pham, Ron Rege Jr., and Souther Salazar.
Check out Wednesday through Sunday after the break…
Numerous French-language outlets are reporting the death of Gérard Lauzier, a very well-known cartoonist/satirist who later had even greater success as a film writer and director. According to his Lambiek page, he created such comics albums as ‘Lili Fatale,” ‘Un Certain Malaise’ and “Al Crane.” As a filmmaker, he was best known for the hit ‘Mon père, ce héros.” which was remade as MY FATHER, THE HERO in America.
He was 76.
§ Douglas Wolk contributes a a graphic novel list to the Times Holiday Books section:
If there’s one book that art-comics enthusiasts would be happiest to find in their stockings this year, it’s probably KRAMERS ERGOT 7 (Buenaventura, $125), except for the small matter that it’s bigger than an entire hearth. This is one of the grandest English-language comics artifacts ever produced — a mammoth hardcover anthology, 16 by 21 inches, of new stories by several dozen notable cartoonists, including Daniel Clowes, Seth, Gabrielle Bell, Kevin Huizenga, Sammy Harkham (who also edited the book) and the “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening. Like the early-20th-century broadsheet newspaper comics pages that inspired it, “Kramers Ergot” occupies its readers’ entire visual field, and most of its contributors have some fun with its dimensions, cramming the page with tiny details or opening it up for apocalyptically huge vistas. The cleverest gesture comes from Chris Ware, whose two-page contribution is built around a cartoon of a sleeping baby printed at the child’s actual size.
§ Meanwhile, STLtoday.com also make their opinions known: The best graphic literature of the year includes books on Feiffer and Kirby.
Mark Newgarden and Paul Karasik send out a heartfelt plea!
Perhaps you can help us!
Paul Karasik & I are currently expanding our 1988 essay HOW TO READ NANCY into a book-length treatment. Our essay originally appeared in Brian Walker’s THE BEST OF ERNIE BUSHMILLER’S NANCY and is currently being used in comics lit curriculums all over the country.
As you may (or may not) recall one particular NANCY strip (enclosed) is deconstructed in great detail. We are trying to determine exactly when this strip was originally printed.
Our source was the 1961 NANCY Pocket Book which obliterated the original publication date & © info on these strips. From studying a fair amount of period syndicate proofsheets it seems most likely that this strip appeared sometime between 1958-1960 as many of the other strips reproduced in this book did.
Unfortunately many of the likely sources (UFS, Walker, Kitchen, Ohio State) do not have complete runs of the strip for this period and neither do we.
We are circulating this request among NANCY lovers and comic strip collectors confidant that someone has the info we seek.
Additionally we are hopeful that someone has high quality reproduction material for this strip (either a proof or the original) and would be willing to contribute a high rez scan.
Even if you don’t have any of this (but perhaps can point us in the direction of someone who did) your name would surely be enshrined in the golden role of the Secret Bushmiller Society for all eternity!
Write to Mark if you can help.
(Aside: We definitely need more NANCY! It took us a good FIVE MINUTES to find a suitable image to accompany this entry.)
We had a huge Kibbles ‘n’ Bits for the day but the browser ate it…so…
§ Tom Spurgeon delivers his own pep talk for the comics troops:
The first and most important reason why I’m hopeful for comics in a deepening recession is that comics is as great and valuable and deserving of attention as any popular art form out there right now, and better than most of them.
It’s absolutely true that if the current economic crisis deepens and widens to a certain point, no one will care about new comic books, comic strips or editorial cartoons. But I think it’s also true that if the economic crisis deepens to a certain point, no one will care about new movies, TV shows, movie or prose, either.
He reserves his harshest words for Steven Grant’s recent assessment of 2008 as a “dreary” year in comics, and I tend to agree. That said, if you’re looking at the world of the Big Two then dreariness might be a logical reaction. Also, 2008 wasn’t as good a year for original, groundbreaking comics as 2007 — almost every book that realy got me excited was a reissue, a translation or a Volume 2. But, in general, yeah, comics have never been healthier.
§ Speaking of dreary, Marc-Oliver Frisch looks at the state of Marvel and their recent event strategy:
Marvel are also evidently looking to tie their line of books more closely together, which is puzzling. If there’s one thing they’ve done much better than DC over the past eight years, it’s that they’ve been taking care to keep their books self-contained and accessible. With “Dark Reign,” though, that seems to be changing, and I don’t think it’s a very smart idea at all. Don’t get me wrong: They’ve got a lot of promising new titles coming up - I absolutely applaud Marvel for hiring fresh voices like Jonathan Hickman, Andy Diggle, Jeff Parker and Matt Fraction. But then again, I’m not very interested in reading material from them that plays a supporting role to what feels like the nineteenth monthly Avengers title cooked up by Brian Michael Bendis - especially a Brian Michael Bendis whose creative faculties seem to be in a recession so deep as to rival that of Iceland.
§ Some will find Geoff Boucher’s highly evenhanded profile of Radical Comics’s Barry Levine dreary, but it’s a good look at a publishing model that has had a lot of ups and downs in recent years.
§ Producer Kathleen Kennedy (THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON) shed some light on the Tintin movies during BENJAMIN BUTTON promos — sounds like there will be three after all:
First up is the motion capture project based on Herge’s legendary comic book character, Tintin. Kennedy confirms that the series is still moving ahead as a trilogy and that a third director will not be brought in for the third part.
Q: When are we going to get our first look at “Tintin”?
Kathleen Kennedy: We’re shooting all the capture beginning in February.
Q: Is it still planned for three movies?
Kennedy: Yes.
Q: Do you have a director for the third one?
Kennedy: It’ll be Peter [Jackson] or Steven [Spielberg]. They’re going to do all of them.
§ The Toronto Star has the effrontery to name Comics that should stay on the page:
Hard Boiled: This ultra-violent comic “written” by Sin City’s Frank Miller is little more than an orgy of robot fights, nasty deaths and destruction, though the cluttered art by Geof Darrow is pretty cool. The robots think they’re human, but there’s no story to speak of.
Harbinger: Based on Jim Shooter’s graphic novel about teenagers with special powers, this is director Brett Ratner’s attempt to redo an X-Men-type story. Anybody who saw X-Men 3 knows he shouldn’t be given the chance.
§ Ironically, given the above, rumbles of SIN CITY 2 — a staple of any comics/movies talk — are being heard out behind the shed:
IGN recently confirmed with Frank Miller that plans for the film are fully underway. “Sin City 2 is written…It’s mainly a matter of working out the details of the production. I’m hoping to do it with Robert Rodriguez again in the same circumstances that we did the first one, and we could be shooting as soon as April.” Those who followed the first film’s production will know that Miller was heavily involved in the direction of the film (Rodriguez chose to resign from the Director’s Guild, so that Miller could officially be credited as such. Miller was also a producer for the film). On Friday, IESB reported that Rosario Dawson corroborated Miller’s story, and that Dawson would be reprising her role as Gail.
However, Mickey Rourke, who is highly touted as a potential Oscar® nominee for his performance in THE WRESTLER, is not so gung-ho for a second turn as Marv:
“No, I’m not interested in that right now. That’s not a reality right now. It’s pissing in the wind,” Rourke admitted. “There’s different factions going different directions there. I don’t know. That’s three hours of make up and I’m claustrophobic, so I’m going to have to work something out.”
Ouch! PUNISHER: WAR ZONE broke a longish string of comic book movies that did well at the box office with a “dismal” performance this weekend. Even though it was the sole wide opening this weekend, it came in #8 and grossed a mere $4 mil in 2,508 theaters, far less than the $13.8 mil 2004 PUNISHER took in.
Potential lessons to be learned from this:
* After two (Dolph Lundgren and Ray Stevenson) total crap movies and one (Thomas Jane) barely tolerable movie, maybe it is just time to retire the Punisher from the movies.
* With grim news everywhere, audiences prefer lighthearted fare and not kidney-ripping.
* Somewhere, Thomas Jane is smiling.
* A business note: This was a Lionsgate Film and not a Marvel Studios production, so it shouldn’t damage Marvel’s bottom line too much.
About Comics publisher and Charles Schulz oddity publisher Nat Gertler has an unusual holiday project: a guide to the 20+ adaptations of A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Let’s say you’re a publisher, and you’re looking for something to publish, something that will sell. What do you choose? Well, what do people like? People like Christmas, especially around Christmas, when folks are buying things. And what else to people like around Christmas? A Charlie Brown Christmas.
That’s it! You should do a book adapation of A Charlie Brown Christmas!
Smith makes his only comics shop appearance for many months.
Noon
Flying Colors
2980 Treat Blvd.
Concord, CA
All day! Or at least from 4 - 10 pm
Desert Island
540 Metropolitan Ave
Brooklyn NY 11211
Gabrielle Bell, Johnathan Bennett, Kim Deitch, Sammy Harkham, David Heatley, Kevin Huizenga, Ben Katchor, Jesse McManus, James McShane, Jerry Moriarty, John Pham, Ron Regé, Jr., Frank Santoro, Matthew Thurber, Adrian Tomine will be signing in rotation.
Legendary horror fan and writer Forrest J. Ackerman passed away Thursday night after a lengthy illness. He was 92. As the editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, and the owner of the famed Ackermansion, a Los Feliz home stuffed with horror and fantasy memorabilia, Ackerman was the über-fan before the Internet made everyone a nerd, a man who lived his passions and spread his love of genre to others, influencing writers and filmmakers with a unique tone that was juvenile but infectious. In comics, he created the character Vampirella; he is also credited with coining the term “sci-fi.”
Mark Evanier has more:
His enthusiasm for the material gave the magazine a flavor that its many imitators couldn’t match. They could print the same stills, interview most of the same interviewees…but they lacked the Secret Ingredient, which was Ackerman. He was as much a star of the publication as Bela Lugosi, loading each issue with monster puns and jokes to the delight of a young and loyal male demographic. Many who grew up on it still refer to him as Uncle Forry, including no small number who became authors or filmmakers and credit the influence of Ackerman.
Hero Complex has much more, including some amazing pictures. There’s a obit thread at the Classic Horror Forum and ComicMix has memories from publisher Jim Warren and others.
Sadly, I never got to go visit the Ackermansion during my LA years, and my interactions with Ackerman were fleeting — for many of my friends, however, he was a friend and inspiration. Certainly his passing is a reminder that an era of fandom — the exploratory, innovative age that created the foundations to help nerd culture take over pop culture — is gone forever.
It’s been a while since Gene has been well enough to travel, so don’t miss your chance to meet this all-time great comics artist. Gene will be at the Mountain View store from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
You know you want to appreciate with your friends.
7-10 pm
Village Pourhouse
64 3rd Avenue
So, just how shitty are things? Really, quite shitty.
Wednesday was a black letter day for the book publishing industry, as it seemed to be Armageddon all over the place. Jay Franco rounds up most of the news:
It’s all over the blogosphere. Publishers are making major changes. One publishing news site already referring to today as Black Wednesday. That’s awfully disheartening. But reality, it might be.
Random House, Simon & Schuster, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Thomas A. Nelson — major players every one, and all publishers of graphic novels — all announced layoffs, restructuring, executive shuffles, or all three. Sam Theilman at Variety laid it all out:
In the past few days, publishers including Simon & Schuster, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Random House have all seen layoffs, painful reorganizations or both. The contraction culminated Wednesday in layoffs eliminating positions at Simon & Schuster and Thomas Nelson and in a massive consolidation at Random House that left, among others, “The Da Vinci Code” publisher Steve Rubin without a job.
Of course, book publishing is just one aspect of the decimation now taking place. ICv2 has been reporting on the layoffs at Wizards of the Coast:
The fallout from Wizards of the Coast’s consolidation of its digital initiatives (see “WotC Pulls the Plug on Gleemax”) has become apparent in a new round of layoffs that reportedly includes VP of Digital Gaming Randy Buehler, Director of Digital Games Andrew Finch, Creative Manager of Digital Design William Meyers, and Online Community Manager Jennifer Paige.
And then Hollywood, lavish, entourage-emulating Hollywood, fell yesterday:
The Hollywood Reporter was gutted and Variety closed its DC bureau.
NBC/Universal: 70 from Universal, 500 overall.
Viacom: 850 people, 7 percent of its workforce.
More to come, of course, yet somehow, Miles O’Brien , we’ll miss you most of all.
O’Brien, who has been CNN’s chief technology and environment correspondent since ending his stint as anchor of “American Morning” in April 2007, is departing as the network dismantles its science and technology unit. Six producers also will be leaving.
Enthusiastic, forward looking Miles. You were always there for us through the falling shrapnel, sonic booms and vengeful astronauts wearing diapers. “Dismantles” science and technology is not a sunny face upon the future.
Thus far — THUS FAR — comics have been weathering the storm relatively well, with the biggest cuts coming, sadly, in the newsaper biz, where editorial cartoonists are dropping like flies, as at the Des Moines Register:
Among the positions cut was the newsroom’s editorial cartoonist, Brian Duffy, who has been in that position since 1983. The Register had claimed to be the only newspaper in the United States with an editorial cartoon on the front page. The tradition extended back to at least the early 20th century, according to Register archives. Ted Rall, the president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, estimated that about 20 editorial cartoonists have been laid off or retired in the last three years.
In comics, immediate news of layoffs has been limited to Devil’s Due and Tokyopop, with some publishing contraction, as with Broccoli Books.
All in all, as we surely don’t need to tell anyone reading this, it’s hard times around the world. As more than one pundit has noted, we’re in the grip of a course-altering economic crisis that will leave little unchanged.
So how bad will it hit comics?
Read the rest of this entry »
NPR’s Laurel Maury has released her Best Graphic Novels Of 2008. There are five, and we won’t tell you what they are, so click on the link already! Let’s just say it’s an eclectic list and comics are great, you know?
Now that the first blush of wonder has faded, new fans are beginning to realize what comics buffs have known for decades: Comics and graphic novels have their own traditions and idiosyncrasies, and learning to understand them can be a rewarding lifetime journey.
One further note: In the comments section, someone coins the term “CAFKA” for the phrase “comics aren’t for kids anymore” and puts it on the banned list. Resolved: We hereby adapt this term and shall use it henceforth.
Since we’re talking numbers, Todd Allen gets a look at Marvel sub and newsstand figures via Marvel’s circulation audit. The #1 subscription title is the kid-friendly MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN with 31,479. #1 at the newsstand is CIVIL WAR CHRONICLES with 7,824.
Interestingly enough, Marvel Adventures Spider-Man didn’t even register 1,000 copies sold on the newsstand. I guess parents must subscribe their children after one issue. If you take the Marvel Adventures titles out of the subscription list, it isn’t completely different from your direct market sales charts. Newsstand, on the other hand will blow a couple minds.
Allen concludes that the newsstand is marginally more kid- and teen-friendly, although the numbers are so low.
The Times Freakonomics blog puts out a call for comics quotes, and you can still go over and join in the search:
I would welcome suggestions of what are the most famous quotations of all time from comic books or graphic novels. These could be not only one-time quotations, but also recurring catchphrases.
Many examples in the comments section, and to the surprise of NO ONE, the longest, most comprehensive list is supplied by one Torsten Adair. Go, go, Torsten!
