Simon Owens at Bloggasm recently conducted an admittedly unscientific but still very interesting poll on diversity in the blogosphere, going so far as to break it out into its separate niches, such as comics:

I emailed 1,000 (of which 302 responded) different bloggers with a 4-question survey that enabled me to statistically chart the diversity of both gender and race within each niche. The 4 questions were:

1. What niche does your blog fall into (Examples: Political, gadget, movie, etc…If more than one, please list)?

2. What are the genders of all the bloggers who write for your site?

3. What are the races for all the bloggers who write for your site (if there are any that you’re not sure about, just indicate that you don’t know)?

4. What do you think of the diversity of the blogosphere, both in your niche and as a whole?

I sent these surveys out over a period of several weeks and waited for them to accumulate in my inbox. After I had a representative sample from each niche, I tallied the results and then added them up.

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You have until Monday to bid on some really nice Batman artwork by Jae Lee … and even if you aren’t a fan of Jae Lee, how can you say no to helping kittens?

Saved Whiskers Rescue Organization, Inc. announced today that artist Jae Lee has donated an original piece of Batman art to Saved Whiskers Rescue Organization, Inc. (S.W.R.O.). The piece will be auctioned through eBay in hopes of raising funds for the many kitties that are cared for by our volunteers. This incredible, and truly one-of-a-kind pencil and inked portrait of the Dark Knight will be up for auction on Ebay starting September 15th and ending the 25th!

So go do it … for the kittens!

Dean Trippe posted this commission piece that he did for Allan Heinberg over on the Digitial Webbing forums:

You can also find it, as well as lots of other Trippe goodness, over on his LiveJournal.

“I don’t know about moral or immoral,” [Mark] Waid began, “but I do know about escapism in the sense that I have no use for it whatsoever.” He believes that there are plenty of opportunities for escapist entertainment available, and he reacts negatively to fans and readers who admonish him because his comics remind them too much of the real world. “You can’t tell a story with any significance whatsoever if you’re going to go out of your way to make sure that it doesn’t touch on the human condition.”

“I tend to shy away from writing topical stuff,” admitted [Allen] Heinberg. “I feel an immense responsibility to be entertaining and to provide escapism, but at the same time, because of who I am, I tend to only write about the questions that I have about life and love, and the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do.” He went on to say that he was “allergic” to the kind of topicality of sending Batman in search of Osama bin Laden, referring of course to Frank Miller’s controversial “Holy Terror, Batman!”

Waid suggested that “when a medium’s been around for 75 years, no one’s going to break it at the point. Not even Frank when he tells his Batman vs. Osama bin Laden story.”

Comic Book Resources has a detailed write-up of a comics panel from last weekend’s West Hollywood Book Fair, which featured Mark Waid, Allen Heinberg, Brian K. Vaughan and Devin Grayson, that’s well worth your time and attention.

Mark Millar considers demographics:

I was talking to a huge retailer last night who told me I had an unusually high number of African American readers. Someone told me this in the past at another store and I’d also heard that I have an unusually high number of female readers too. The female readers, I was told, were mostly new readers who came in via Manga and the movies and so found my Ultimate stuff the easiest to read because you could understand everything from a couple of trades. That makes sense and it’s the same deal with BMB.

But what’s with the African American numbers? That’s really interesting to me because I can’t figure it out at all. I remember hearing years back that X-Men had a very high black readership and that makes sense in a simplistic kind of way because it was a book dealing with people being judged because they were different from the majority. But I’m not sure what particular thing my writing has that brings in the African American audience. I was talking to Reggie Hudlin about the demographics ages back and he explained how white America and black America have mostly different top ten TV programmes. Why, I don’t know, but I find this fascinating and would be curious to hear what people think.

What makes readers float to a specific creator? JQ’s board, interestingly, has lots of old school fans. Brian B’s board feels like a high number of female readers and gay people. I think there’s a very specific identity to this board too and I like it. It’s funny how we all find our crew to hang out with.

As you might expect, this gives Millarworld posters the chance to bring out some generalizations:

“A larger percentage of Black people I would wager are more familiar with comics and comic book characters than most others. Just listen to any given rap record.”

“Most of the girls I’ve seen and/or talked to about comics are Niall Gaiman loving quasi-Goths.”

“all the black guys at my kung fu school read Marvel, including the guy I was best man for. So do most of the white guys, come to think of it. And all of them rate Ultimates above anything else.”

This week, I’m going to do something a little different, because it’s my column and I can. Also, because I don’t have much choice in the matter this week. There’s a image from last week’s stack of comics that I simply can’t stop thinking about.

Normally, I find an image that stays with me after I’m finished reading, and muse on it for a little while before sitting down to write. Sometimes, this is involuntary. I’ll see an image, and be unable to put it out of my mind. It’s the most natural image to write about. I would prefer to keep this feature celebratory, but sometimes you just have to sit down and criticize (even when you normally like the artist). It’s only healthy.
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This has already done the rounds of some of the various Blogospheric atmospheres, but let’s start off a slow Friday by looking at the Comic Strip Artist’s Kit:

It was created to help beginning comic artists deal with perspective problems and other drawing difficulties… It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever seen about practical staging and drawing for storyboards or comic books.

Animator Mark Kennedy posts brand new scans of the kit - provided by the author, Carson Van Osten - on his blog, and they live up to the above hype. Well worth checking out.

Josh Howard offers a sneak preview of the Lord of the Rings sketch cards he did for the upcoming Lord of the Rings Masterpiece card set from Topps:

First Superman Returns, now X-Men 3 … is it May again? In any event, Brett Ratner chats with MTV.com about X-Men 3:

MTV: Speaking of comic books, how much of the movie was drawn from Joss Whedon’s story “Gifted”?

Ratner: It wasn’t just from Whedon. Every scene in this movie you could find in an existing comic book — a portion of it or the idea behind it. I didn’t want the fans saying, “Oh, Brett Ratner invented this in his mind.” So I made Zak and Simon show me the comic book references. Every single scene I had on my wall in my office in comic book form.

MTV: Was it difficult to balance so many characters? There are so many more mutants in this film than in the previous two.

Ratner: Well, that was the challenge. I didn’t want to reinvent the franchise. My goal was to stay true to the first two movies and create a film that felt like it was part of a trilogy, as if you’re watching “Lord of the Rings.” I thought Bryan did a brilliant job of creating the universe, so I just stayed within that tone and focused on the emotionality of the story and the characters.

The X-Men 3 DVD will be released Oct. 3.

The Arizona Republic has a story up about this weekend’s Phoenix Cactus Comicon and female comic fans:

Comicons, as they’re called, are appealing to a wider range of people these days, including women of all ages. Years ago, a woman at a comicon was like an alien beamed down from another planet.

Expect to see more females and people of diverse backgrounds Friday evening through Sunday at the fifth annual Phoenix Cactus Comicon at the Mesa Convention Center. And you can watch films, play computer games, hear a concert and see fans in costumes in addition to being able to buy comic books and meet their creators.

Girls like comics? Who would have thought?

Interestingly enough, Border is one of the sponsors of the convention, and they spoke with a sales person from the store who focuses on manga:

Amy Black of Mesa, a corporate sales coordinator at Borders, will be at the convention all weekend with daughter Natasha, 13. Black set up a manga group at the store in Chandler so Natasha would have a safe place to interact with other fans. Many manga titles appeal to girls with relationship-oriented plot lines instead of action.

“The face of the comic-book fan is definitely changing,” said Black, adding that the manga club is about half male, half female, and mostly in their teens.

Comics are getting more popular and mainstream, too. Borders is a part sponsor of the comicon, and its sales of manga and graphic novels are growing.

Black said when she started with the company seven years ago that manga and graphic novels took up two small shelves. “Now I couldn’t even count the number of shelves we have,” she said, “but it’s expanded to where we have whole aisles.”

For more information on the con, check out the Phoenix Cactus Comicon home page.

But I Like It creator Joe Sacco will be in Vancouver and Seattle early next week, per the Fantagraphics blog:

Beginning this Sunday, JOE SACCO is embarking on a brief Vancouver and Seattle tour to promote his latest book, BUT I LIKE IT. Don’t miss this rare chance to see the elusive (and ever-charming) Sacco in person. The festivities kick off Sunday morning in Vancouver, B.C.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 24TH:

WHEN: 10:30 am - 12:00pm
WHAT: CBC Studio One Book Club at Word On the Street
WHERE: The Peter McKay room, Central Branch of the Vancouver Public Library, 350 West Georgia Street

The Word on the Street is a day-long festival that takes place at the library. Sacco’s CBC event will be part of it, featuring an on-stage interview with Sheryl MacKay and John Burns, in two parts. It will be taped for broadcast. Tickets are limited: Visit the CBC Studio One Book Club for information on how to reserve a seat — and hurry, because the deadline for buying tickets is tomorrow!

WHEN: 3:00pm - 4:15pm
WHAT: Signing at Word Under the Street
WHERE: Central Branch of the Vancouver Public Library, 350 West Georgia Street

This afternoon event features an on-stage interview with Sean Cranbury of Sophia Books, followed by a signing.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25TH:

WHEN: 7pm
WHAT: Book signing
WHERE: Third Place Books, 17171 Bothell Way NE, Lake Forest Park, WA 98155

Comics Continuum has images up from the upcoming Smallville episode “Silence,” which features Oliver Queen. It also notes that an upcoming episode featuring the Smallville-verse versions of Flash, Cyborg, Aquaman and Green Arrow is titled “Justice” and is scheduled for later in the season.

For Better or For Worse is one of few comic strips that progress in real time. It’s one of the pioneers of this genre of comic art and it all begins with a story, recounting the lives and antics of the multi-generational Patterson family.

Think for a moment about how long it takes you to read the daily comic…8-10 seconds? Here you’ll learn about how much time goes into making FBorFW the best it can be.

It may be somewhat simplistic - the victim of writing for the widest possible audience - but this behind the scenes look at the creation of Lynn Johnson’s For Better Or Worse is well worth reading, not least of which for the detail it gives in what is needed to create the newspaper strip…

(Via Drawn).

The December DC solicitations are out, bringing with them the cleverly titled Infinite Christmas Special. Too bad it’s not this Infinite Christmas, the sequel to 1985’s Christmas On Infinite Earths. [Dear DC: No hard feelings -- but a George Pérez sketch of Santa, brandishing the Red Ryder BB Gun and the security blanket, would help ease the pain. Love, Tom.]

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Ty Templeton - The Man, The Artist, The Writer, The Teacher:

Last year I took Storytelling and Layout and Writing for Comics with Ty, both of which were real eye openers. Ty is not only a very talented artist and writer himself, but he can TEACH! He really takes the time to think about his process and is able to articulate virtually any storytelling decision that he has made. Quite often he would bring examples of master cartoonists like Adams, Kubert and Kirby to demonstrate a specific point.

Each class would start with Ty demonstrating a basic concept on the board and we would be asked to copy the drawings and make notes. Then he would give us a short amount of time to apply the new info. This would be followed by a careful critique that was totally amazing given the illegibility of some of our squiggles. Many of the students were writers, but that didn’t matter because to learn the basic concepts that Ty was trying to teach all you really needed to know was how to draw stick figures.

The original workshops were only six weeks in length, but were a crash course in storytelling. We covered types of transitions in storytelling, the four important elements that you must have on every page, how to lead the eye through a page, placement of pictorial elements in a panel to strengthen the narrative idea, spotting blacks to direct eye flow, utilizing perspective to direct eye flow, reading a script for clarity in storytelling, character design, location design etc. etc.

Frankly I would categorize Ty’s class as being the comics equivalent of a Syd Field or Robert McKee course in film scriptwriting. He is THE comics storytelling guru. Whether you are a beginner or a semi-pro looking to push your portfolio to the next level, these are great courses.

This year he has combined the writing class and the storytelling class into one. It is being promoted as Ty Templeton’s Comic Book Boot Camp. Part one will run this fall (in October) and part two will be available in the spring. For those who have taken the previous incarnation, keep in mind these will each be eight week sessions that will contain additional info. Definitely worth taking again if you can afford it.

More information - not only on Ty’s classes, but the school he teaches at - can be found here.

Now there’s somewhere for you to get your comics online, and keep them online…

DriveThruComics, a sister site of DriveThruRPG, the most successful downloadable RPG site, launched this week.  The business model derives revenue by selling PDFs of comics to consumers via download.  Prices are set at $1.99 for most comics, and around 30% off for most graphic novels. 

 

Comics are made available via download at a variety of times relative to street date, from slightly before to considerably after. 

 

Publishers signed up for the launch include Dabel Brothers Productions, Shi, About Comics, Arcana, Archaia, NBM, UDON, Heroic Publishing, and Kenzer and Company, plus a number of others, including some publishers of adult material.  Publishers expected to make content available soon include Antarctic, Heavy Metal, and Markosia.  Around 250 products are available on the site now.

The site itself is here, and is currently offering some free downloads to get people interested…

Indie publisher Viper Comics wants you:

Viper Comics has announced they will now be accepting open submissions for a webcomic to join the company’s existing strips You’ll Have That and The Horrible Pirates.

“Viper is always on the lookout for the newest talent in comics and hopefully this opportunity will allow us to showcase a great unknown to a world-wide audience,” said Viper President Jessie Garza.

Creators will need to provide sample pages/strips of their webcomic (with finished art) and a full pitch regarding the characters and content. Only submissions from complete creative teams will be accepted. All submissions should be sent to info@vipercomics.com .

AiT/Planet Lar isn’t the only comics presence getting the love on this weekend’s episode of The War at Home … Paul Dini reports on his involvement with the show:

This Sunday night’s episode of Fox’s THE WAR AT HOME (9:30 PM) features a segment that takes place at a comic book convention. The producers were looking to spotlight some independent comic creations, so they approached me about featuring Jingle Belle and some of my other Dinicartoons. This seemed like the perfect time to debut my new logo, which features Jing, Ida Red, SuperRica and Rashy, and a bunch of other new and familiar characters. The good folks on the show (thanks Donna and Hawley!) even went so far as to construct this fabulous shrine.

Also be sure and watch for a certain gorgeous girl magician who makes a surprise appearance in the background of this episode.

The War at Home airs on FOX this Sunday night at 9:30 p.m. ET.

Planetxbox360.com has some new stills from the Superman Returns video game, if anyone in the world is even still remotely interested in anything Superman Returns-related:

They write:

It feels like the movie came out several years ago, and I wonder how well they’ll be able to ride the buzz into sales of the game.

I guess this puts a lot of pressure on the developers to make the gameplay strong, because they can’t expect the typical runoff purchase effect from people fresh off a cinema high. The Riddick game for the original Xbox did much better than the film it was inspired by, so who knows?

What happens when everyone and your brother get super powers? But you’re left out? Such is the plight of everyday member of humanity Stan, the lone normalman in a world of crazy capes. Go check it out.