The Comics Reporter

April 15, 2010

Happy 23rd Birthday, Comic Relief!

posted 2:00 am PST | Permalink

Quick hits
Craft
Little Wolvie
Liz Prince Draws The Punisher
Diana Tamblyn Draws Black Canary

Exhibits/Events
Go See Jeff Smith In Chicago
PAD Says His Reading Was A Success

History
Batman/Spawn">On Batman/Spawn
The Love Life Of Richie Rich

Industry
Happy 1000th Post, Tim O'Neil!

Interviews/Profiles
Wired: Bill Amend">Wired: Bill Amend
Wired: Peter Bagge">Wired: Peter Bagge
Potrzebie: Joe Kubert">Potrzebie: Joe Kubert
: David Petersen">Blog@Newsarama: David Petersen

Publishing
I Would Buy It
Terror Titans">On Terror Titans

Reviews
Brian Hibbs: Various
Kate Dacey: Various
Drone">Sean Kleefeld: Drone
Paul O'Brien: Various
Locas 2">Grant Goggans: Locas 2
Smile">Johanna Draper Carlson: Smile
Youngblood #1">Marc-Oliver Frisch: Youngblood #1
Adventure Comics #5-6">Todd Klein: Adventure Comics #5-6
Little Nothings Vol. 3">Greg McElhatton: Little Nothings Vol. 3

April 14, 2010

CR Review: Vigl

Creator: Tim Danko
Publishing Information: Dead Xerox Press, mini-comic, 20 pages, March 2010
Ordering Numbers:

I'm not exactly sure what's going on with this strapping-looking mini-comic. I think it's a solo effort from Tim Danko, of Dead Xerox Press, the anchor of a small press circle with whom I'm almost completely unfamiliar -- they have a manifesto and everything -- but I can't be sure of that. I do know that I like it as an object. It's a nice, hand-held size, with paper that has an appealing, tactile quality and cover stock even more so. The narrative, such as it is, follows a gunman across a supple landscape as twin text tracks measure his progress. It's a tumble of effects I tend to enjoy: inky figures, obtuse and hard-to-follow action, color only in spots, words that operate on two levels, lettering that has a conscious visual identity.

The only thing I can't quite decide is if the whole thing is any good or not. I like comics that confuse and confound. It's probably my age, and with it a corresponding exhaustion with standard narratives having read so many of them, but most days I think I'd gladly sit on top of pile of pages filled with incomprehensible nonsense for the rest of my life than read one more panel of a comic book aching to be a movie or an organized parade of cliches from some successful author convinced by their agent to pinch one out for a publisher that could use the crossover sales burst. My hunch is that Vigl is modestly successful in its aims and effects, that the visual qualities will either work for you or won't and are on the whole further along in a developmental sense than the more severe formal techniques. In other words, I enjoyed looking at it, wouldn't mind seeing more, and wouldn't be shocked if someone out there violently disagreed with me.

posted 4:00 pm PST | Permalink

Not Comics: Covering My Father

posted 11:30 am PST | Permalink

Bundled, Tossed, Untied And Stacked

By Tom Spurgeon

* Steve Bissette 1963 universe.">has announced a major new project with his portion of the divvied-up 1963 universe. I'm not sure how to boil that news down, to be honest -- you should just go read the announcement if you're interested. It's all there.

* the big news for the general comics media since I last posted this column is the announcement at WonderCon that the Jim Lee/Frank Miller effort All-Star Batman and Robin has transmogrified into a six-issue mini-series called Dark Knight: Boy Wonder, due to start in February. The last issue of the previous series came out in 2008. Originally intended as a big-name series to which shop owners could point casual customers roughly aware of the films and other media efforts for the character, the All-Star title quickly established itself as a frequently hilarious, demented and I would posit wholly inaccessible take on the caped crusader.

* the nice folks at Cartoon Books have revealed their cover for the next issue of RASL. I really enjoy RASL in a way I don't enjoy any other comic right now.

* it looks like Del Rey has decided not to continue forward with a second volume of X-Men: Misfits, the superhero/shojo blend comic.

* Eric Powell, he of one-time Eisner Awards dominance, is spinning of his Goon character Buzzard into his own mini-series.

* the cartoonist and writer Jeff Lemire says that he'll be working on established DC properties.

* Vanguard announces plans for Adams, Frazetta books this summer. The Frazetta book is one of those titles I think a lot of publishers have considered doing or even pursued doing to a certain extent at one time or another.

* this summer's forthcoming X-Women project seems like one out of its natural time in a lot of was, although this preview indicates it's been in the hopper since 2006. But Milo Manara drawing from a Chris Claremont script and it being a special project where those creators simply doing an X-Men-related book is supposed to drive interest, all of that sounds like 1996 to me. Still, I'll look at it. Manara cracks me up.

* I don't run as much news about on-line comics debuts as I might if I knew enough about on-line comics to tag which ones look good and which one don't without reading months' worth of work, but even I know a comics effort by John Kerschbaum is bound to be at least worth watching if not outright awesome.

* a comic by Jaime Hernandez is an even greater no-brainer.

* in licensing rescue news, it looks like Seven Seas has picked up Gunslinger Girl from ADV and Blood Alone from Infinity. Not familiar with the latter but the former, like most of the ADV efforts, is quite slick and seems like it might have a potential wider audience. I remember it was something about little girls as killer-assassins with adult handlers, and just about as creepy without sliding into debauched porn as you might imagine with that premise.

* Little Dee to a close.">Christoper Baldwin brings Little Dee to a close.

* finally, ICv2.com has more on that massive anniversary of Doonesbury book coming out later this year from Andrews McMeel: 13 percent or so of all strips Trudeau's done, 650+ pages, $100 retail (I'm guessing $65-$70 at an on-line buyer), 18 (!!) essays from Trudeau. The book roared over the horizon in an interview the Washington Post ran with the cartoonist. Sounds like a must-buy to me.

posted 11:00 am PST | Permalink

Go, Read: My Word

posted 10:30 am PST | Permalink

Steve Breen Wins 2010 Fischetti Award

Alan Gardner caught this story on which I fairly whiffed: Steve Breen of the San Diego Union-Tribune has won the John Fischetti Editorial Cartoon Competition. His submission is the cartoon above, which ran July 11 of last year.

Steve Breen has won the Pulitzer Prize twice, the Berryman Award, the Thomas Nast Award and the National Headliner Award. He's been with the Union-Tribune since 2001.

The award has been given out since 1980 and is named after John Fischetti. I don't recall the award in years past being named so close to the Pulitzer, which I think is kind of unfortunate since the Pulitzer is clearly the bigger award, but maybe I'm just forgetting that part. I also can't remember what the winner gets, although I do recall there's a healthy scholarship program also attached to the Fischetti name.

posted 10:00 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Man Of The Bat

posted 9:30 am PST | Permalink

You Bastards! You Blew It Up!

In advance of the standard Direct Market sales charts and analysis, serene numbers guru John Jackson Miller notes something slightly horrifying about the make-up of Diamond's Top 300: more comic book titles are priced at 3.99 rather than $2.99. "130 comic books were priced at $3.99, with 124 priced at $2.99. The intermediary step, $3.50, continues to be bypassed with only 16 comics at that level," he reports.

This is semi-startling on a couple of levels. First, I believed, and therefore I'm guessing others might have also thought this, that the $3.99 price point was something that was sprinkled about various lines on the big crossovers and most popular titles but hadn't started to dominate -- say 20-25 percent of the books in that realm. Second, there's just so much that feels wrong about the $3.99 price point. I have yet to hear anybody put together a forward-thinking, positive rationale for this strategy -- a 33 percent price hike during a time of economic stresses when the comics have never been more profitable the way they're leveraged across the board and nearly all the major players are as stable and non-desperate for cash as any time in the last two decades. The justifications for it feel like a teenager deciding to drive an increasing number of her errands at 90 mph and admitting this is crazy but pointing out they've managed to do this so far without totaling the car. In other words, there's been no rationale expressed at all. Even the standard mainstream comics fob-offs for bad behavior -- this is what you guys support, we'll just make the comics worth the greater amount -- ring hollow to me. What choice do the fan have but to support certain price points, how long will they, how can we tell there isn't bailing out of purchases elsewhere (have profits matched the price increase?) and has anyone really seen a 33 percent upgrade in comic book quality recently?

In the end, despite it having to come from anecdotal evidence and the reading of reader behavior through a system of guaranteed sales that makes it nearly impossible to chart such things, it's difficult to believe there isn't a huge, ongoing risk in driving away or hamstringing the buying habits of long-time customers during 1) a lingering recession; 2) the explosion of cheap alternatives through digital delivery of movies, music and prose; 3) the potential transformation of the industry itself as comics companies invest in digital strategies; 4) arguable narrative exhaustion with characters that have been around with many of those readers for decades. It just feels wrong, and now the wrong has reached a potential tipping point. What will be the agent that tests it with a push?

posted 9:00 am PST | Permalink

Go, Bookmark: Eleanor Davis' Redesigned And Illustration-Heavy Site

posted 8:30 am PST | Permalink

Kick-Ass Pushes Past 100K Sold

I'm a tiny bit confused about this story, that Marvel has sold 100,000 of the Kick-Ass trade in advance of the forthcoming film. And hey, good for them. John Romita Jr. deserves a mainstream audience, if that's who's buying the book, and the royalty for a $25 book with the standard creator-owned contract should be pretty sweet. Still, it's been established for about ten years now that single-volume representations of films do well if a) the film is highly anticipated, b) the film is good. If Fantagraphics and its limited resources can move 100,000 copies of Ghost World, a movie that didn't make what Kick-Ass is likely to make in its first weekend, at a time when bookstore sales of comics was still mostly uncharted territory, shouldn't it be surprising if Marvel didn't sell six-figures on a book like this? I'm failing to see what's extraordinary here except that Marvel sent out a press release. The Spider-Man and X-Men comparisons -- that this is more than any book featuring those characters sold with their movies -- doesn't work because those aren't equivalent book/movie relationships.

posted 8:00 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Funny Tom Tomorrow Strip

via

posted 7:30 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Jack Kirby's Tax Racket

posted 7:30 am PST | Permalink

Collective Memory: MoCCA Festival 2010

*****
*****

posted 7:00 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Objet D'Afro Contest Winners

posted 6:30 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Bikinis Hawaiian Style

posted 4:00 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: C&H; Re-Imagined

probably worth following the links if you're a Calvin and Hobbes fan; if not, it's not

posted 4:00 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Hit Or Miss

posted 4:00 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Detective Comics #482

posted 4:00 am PST | Permalink

Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* I've been hugging this story close to my chest about Universal Uclick merging with international arm Atlantic Syndication, trying to figure out some angle to it. At this point I'll admit defeat and suggest the move follows a general comics merger trend without anything particularly startling about this individual instance, and hope I'm right.

* Jeet Heer writes about the reclamation of comics artists using an interesting test case: Al Williamson.

* Matthew Brady breaks down the C2E2 programming so you don't have to. Speaking of Brady, I liked this short review of an independent film using superhero tropes: none of it matters if the film isn't very good.

* Dark Knight Returns review ever?">best Dark Knight Returns review ever?

* another awards nomination for Jeff Smith, Little Mouse Gets Ready">this time for his TOON Book Little Mouse Gets Ready. I know a three-year-old that would be very happy if they knew what awards were and that people made the books she reads and probably some other stuff, too.

* there's a nice essay here from the artist Gabriel Ba about how Image Comics -- the comics that caught his imagination as a teen -- changed his life.

* finally, a dash of MoCCA: it appears that Rickey Purdin went to the MoCCA Festival and bought all the comics. Marc Sobel went to MoCCA and declares it the best ever. Seth Kushner took photos.

posted 3:00 am PST | Permalink

Happy 61st Birthday, Dave Gibbons!

posted 2:00 am PST | Permalink

Happy 56th Birthday, Chuck Dixon!

posted 2:00 am PST | Permalink

Happy 56th Birthday, Katsuhiro Otomo!

posted 2:00 am PST | Permalink

Happy 51st Birthday, Gerhard!

posted 2:00 am PST | Permalink

Quick hits
Craft
Sean Phillips Sketches

Exhibits/Events
Dave and Raina Re-Load For C2E2

History
Grant Morrison's X-Men Was Weird And Beautiful

Interviews/Profiles
CBR: Jeff Parker">CBR: Jeff Parker
WSJ: Dash Shaw">WSJ: Dash Shaw
CBR: Daniel Way">CBR: Daniel Way
CBR: Peter David">CBR: Peter David

Not Comics
Oh, What A Cute Comics House
Diary Of A Teenage Girl Extends Run">Diary Of A Teenage Girl Extends Run

Publishing
Blackest Night Didn't Exist">My Blackest Night Didn't Exist

Reviews
The Littlest Bitch">Nina Stone: The Littlest Bitch
Foiled">Johanna Draper Carlson: Foiled
Mercury">Johanna Draper Carlson: Mercury
Everything Dies">Alan David Doane: Everything Dies
The Question #37">Marc-Oliver Frisch: The Question #37
Rapunzel's Revenge">Johanna Draper Carlson: Rapunzel's Revenge
Astro City: The Dark Age Vol. 4 #1">Todd Klein: Astro City: The Dark Age Vol. 4 #1

Daily Blog Archives
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009

Full Archives