It never rains but it pours for Civil War problems:

LA’s invocing just went up, and it looks like EVERY West Coast retailer is getting massively allocated (to the tune of 10-15% — I ordered 100 copies, and am recieving 14) on CIVIL WAR #6 this week.

We’re ASSUMING it’s like last week’s problem with the DCs, and they didn’t, y’know, burn up in a fiery traffic accident or something, but we don’t actually know because, as is normal, we found out by looking at our invoices, and not because anyone at Diamond, y’know, told us.

I’ll have the shipping list up on tomorrow (or probably Monday), but in the meantime I want your input of how to deal with this operationally.

As I see it, I have 3 options:
1) Fill the subs to the degree that I can. We have (I think) 42 preorders for CIVIL WAR #6, and we’re getting 14 copies. I can possibly FIFO the order with which people signed up, or I can give them in the order that people arrive, or I can do what I did with JUSTICE #9 last week and just fill in alpha-order (skipping the staff, skipping anyone w/o current paperwork, and anyone with a week+ of holds on file). Ken Valentin did not like this method last week.

2) Skip the subs entirely, and just make it first-come/first-served to the first 14 people who walk in the door. However, subscribers have signed a legal binding contract to purchase the book from me, many as much as 19 weeks in advance (CW #6 is very late), so this is a crummy plan in terms of risk/reward.

3) Say “fuck it” and just not sell ANYONE the book until I can sell it to EVERYONE. The problem with this concept is that we have 3 other stores in a mile of us. 6 in 2 miles. Now, everyone in the City of San Francisco will be out by, say, 1 PM, and, in a scenerio #2, I can only help 14 people any way, but I’m not so sure that I want to tell the first 2 hours of New Comics Day trade (they being the hardcorest of the hardcore) to go to another store.

What do you think?

Additionally, I want to strongly urge all Blog Critics reading this to please NOT review CIVIL WAR #6 for a week — at least 1/3 of the country isn’t going to be able to read it this week (and all of Australia… they’re served from the LA warehouse), and saying anything that could be remotely read as a spoiler is really just Dirty Pool.

Meanwhile, retailer Ryan Higgins has found something interesting online from Marvel:

I found this posted on another forum…and, no, Marvel, I didn’t just copy this from the retailer e-mail thankyouverymuch.

‘CIVIL WAR UPDATES
The on sale date for the CIVIL WAR TPB will be adjusted once the final
issue has been finished. The solicited date shall be pushed out to give
you a few extra weeks to sell issue 7. An updated schedule for the
final issues of CIVIL WAR will be posted in one week.’

Here’s hoping the final issues mentioned are just the crossovers, because if #7 is moved again, I’d love to see the reaction from the hardcore fans…

The video game blog Joystiq is holding one final charity raffle this year to benefit Child’s Play, with several Bone-related prizes:

One final charity raffle to finish off ‘06 in style. We’re going to be raffling a bundle including a copy of the IGF-nominated Bone: The Great Cow Race signed by the game’s developers, copies of Jeff Smith’s first two Bone books, Out From Boneville and The Great Cow Race signed by Mr. Smith himself, and downloadable codes for the Director’s Cuts of both of Telltale’s Bone episodes!

Well, here’s some bad news to end the year on. The wonderful Kitchen Sink Magazine, which has published work by cartoonists and writers like Farel Dalrymple and Laurenn McCubbin, is to fold next year, and needs financial help now:

Well, folks, the Sink’s backed up. These are tough times for independent media—we’ve seen some friends struggle and others succumb, and of course we’ve got problems of our own. Chief among them is that our distributor is behind on payments for previous issues, and with our current national distribution model, we rely on these payments to fund future issues.

KS15 is on hold at the printer until we can afford to have it shipped. This delay is also affecting KS16, which will conclude volume four. For now, you’ll have to take our word for it that both of these issues are amazing: gorgeous covers by Andrew Schoultz and Camille Rose Garcia, delicious insides by our staff and editors, as well as new contributors like Geraldine Kim, Gravity Goldberg, Julia Wertz, Rodney Koeneke and Stephanie Young.

We can’t wait for you to see these magazines, so we’re asking for your help. We need to raise $1,000 to get issue 15 shipped in January, and we also need to raise money for an expanded KS16, which will be our final issue.

Details of how to donate to the magazine to help them finish off their run are at the link. It’s still the holiday season, people. Go and help.

On Gearlog, a gadget blog, poster Andre Bermudez celebrates receiving a Superman alarm clock for Christmas:

Getting out of bed in the morning is no easy feat for me, but now I wake up refreshed to the Superman theme song. The inspirational John Williams score plays loudly on my new AM/FM clock radio and if I feel I need more rest before I head out into Metropolis I can just smack the giant “S” symbol that doubles as the snooze button. Of course, it also comes with a traditional alarm sound if epic theme music isn’t your cup of tea in the morning. The Superman alarm clock can also project the time and Superman symbol onto the wall or ceiling (I had fun teasing my cat with this feature). It takes a 9V battery for backup purposes as well.

So what comic-related gifts did you get this year?

Fans of Derek Wildstar and the rest of the crew of the Argo can check out the Star Blazers website to view Star Blazers: Rebirth, a web comic by Tim Eldred (Grease Monkey).

The story takes place 25 years after the events of the Star Blazer cartoon, in which the crew of the Argo went off to Iscandar to save the human race from the Gamilons and later fought the dreaded Comet Empire. The show is an edited version of Space Battleship Yamato, an anime series created by Leiji Matsumoto. It was dubbed into English and edited for violence, language and alcohol use. Comico published a mini-series based on the program back in the 1980s.

In his latest column for ICv2.com, retailer Steve Bennett uses discussion about the new, if temporary, look for the Riverdale gang to consider efforts by DC and Marvel to appeal to the tween set using existing characters:

… this isn’t an either or situation, you can have classic and post-modern versions of characters existing side by side with each other. DC is already selectively practicing this. To appeal to the mainstream super-hero reader there’s the Trial of Shazam Captain Marvel and for everyone else there’s Jeff Smith’s upcoming rendition of the classic incarnation. It’ll probably come as no surprise that I prefer the utter wish fulfillment of the original, but until a lot more kids start coming into Dark Star I can’t ignore the way copies of Trial of Shazam has been flying off our shelves.

If you want to do a dark Supergirl, fine, just so long as somewhere there’s one who, you know, might actually appeal to girls. Say a Supergirl with a manga style story that focuses more on Linda Lee Danvers and her cat than super-heroics, or a version of X-23 where she’s the strange new Goth girl at school with the terrible secret who slowly learns to reach out past her pain (anyone who says girls could never enjoy the fantasy of a character who “cuts loose” the way boys do hasn’t an inkling just how mean and vindictive your average teen-age girl can be).

Bennett’s conclusion isn’t surprising: Marvel seems to be in the lead, with titles like Power Pack and New X-Men – he doesn’t mention the Marvel Adventures and Johnny DC lines, or Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane — both publishers could be doing a lot more.

According to a post on his message board, Amazing Spider-Man/Thor writer J. Michael Straczynski is working on a screenplay for a “big budget historical movie” based on the life of King David. He also gives an update on his comic projects in the same post:

I’m three issues into Thor, four issues into the secret project I’m writing for Marvel, Spider-Ham comes out shortly (couldn’t love it more), Bullet Points 2 comes out this week, and in general I’m keeping busy.

(Thanks, Peter)

Note: Image above is from Kyle Baker’s King David Vertigo project; as far as I know, it has nothing to do with JMS’s project beyond the similar subject matter. It’s also worth checking out if you haven’t read it.

The most fascinating part by far of CBR’s Jim Rugg interview is his detailing of how he found the time to draw Plain Janes while also holding down a day job:

First I went through and broke the script into eight page printouts (this was just for convenience, easier to carry around than a 150 page script). Then I made a template in Illustrator of pages sized at 50% of the printed, final page. I printed a stack of these, 4 templates per page, for thumbnails. I woke up an hour earlier than normal each day (I’m a morning person and it’s easier for me to do problem solving work like breakdowns and pencils in the morning). I drew a thumbnail, and then I ruled borders on a page (based on a pre-approved thumbnail) and lightly penciled it. Then I went to the day job. During my lunch hour I’d thumbnail another page. Then I came home, finished prepping the page for ink, and started inking. Break for some food. Finish inking (usually while I ink, I listen to NPR or an audio book). Spend half an hour or so with the wife, read for a little bit, and fall asleep. On Fridays or Mondays I sent scans of thumbnails, inks, and grayscales to Shelly for revision/approval. Once the grayscale pages were approved, I FTPed them to DC. I did grayscaling whenever I could find spare time. On weekends, I tried to catch up or get ahead (ha ha, in theory at least. I’m not even sure getting ahead is possible. Curse you, Father Time). Friday and Saturday nights I usually drank, but only moderately, not much of a tolerance anymore.

It’s not only this week’s 52 that has a cliffhanger ending; this week’s Daily Planet tie-in over at the official 52 site does, too:

METROPOLIS, December 31 —
They look up to the sky to see the symbol. It happens every year. Citizens of Metropolis flood the subways and buses toward Lexcorp Circle to pack themselves in like sardines, shoulder to shoulder, hermetically sealed inside their oversized, obnoxiously puffy coats, frustrated by the bad breath of the old man standing to their right and the loud banter of the drunk college kids attempting to start a mosh pit of sorts to their left. But when the countdown starts, it’s always the same. They forget their surrounding for ten seconds, form a smile of unknown origin, and they look up to the sky. And they see Superman’s symbol.
Or at least that’s what usually happens.

Lois Lane is apparently the writer of the journalism in question, but I preferred her piece that won the Pulitizer.

(Also, JG Jones knows what he wants.)

Tennessee retailer Mark Amoroso’s piece at ICv2 about unfair retail competition may be about to have unintended results:

I just happened to order the book Ghost Pirates and other Revenants of the Sea Collection from the Diamond TRU system. The TRU site didn’t have much information about the book so I decided to do a Web search for more info. I was surprised to find a link to Wal-Mart.com.

Curious, I went to the site and found the book for just a bit more than what my discount price is from Diamond. I decided to do a search for “Diamond Comics Distributors” under “books.” To my surprise I found 2838 books that appear to be supplied to Wal-Mart by Diamond.

Wal-Mart sells the books at up to 37% off, with a .97 cent shipping fee.

Hands up everyone who immediately thought “I want to check out what Wal-Mart.com has in stock”…

Paul O’Brien - he brings the Marvel sales figures and the cold, hard truth, as in his analysis of the sales of the first issue of the new Iron Fist series:

Every month there seems to be at least one new title that sticks out a completely spurious “Sold out at Diamond” press release, as if this were some sort of achievement. The reality, of course is that the print run is only fixed after the orders come in, and so anything can sell out at Diamond if the overprint is kept small enough. Frankly, if you’re a Marvel Universe superhero title, debuting in the 30Ks is not great, because you tend to fall sharply over the next couple of issues, and then you’re in trouble. The last IRON FIST solo title, launched in March 2004, started off with 34K, and got axed with issue #6. Obviously this is a few thousand higher, but it’s still not brilliant.

People! This was a good book! Why aren’t you buying it?

Although I’ve seen this map of DC’s Gotham City before — I don’t remember where — today it pops up on the quirky Strange Maps blog, complete with some “lesser-known facts” about Batman’s stomping grounds. A sampling:

The place-name ‘Gotham’ has an interesting pedigree. It was used as early as the 15th century to refer to places with foolish inhabitants – a direct reference to the eponymous town in Nottinghamshire, England.

Washington Irving, author of ‘Sleepy Hollow’ fame, used it as a sobriquet for New York for the first time in his satire Salmagundi (1807).

Prior to 1941, Batman’s home (in the DC Comics) was New York City; he didn’t move to Gotham until DC Comics #48 (in February 1941).*

For a larger image, a map key and more facts, visit the link.

(* That should be Detective Comics #48.)

 

I hope the holidays have treated everyone well!

Point

At Post-Modern Barney, Dorian gives his personal take on issues of sexism and misogyny in the industry in his post: 2006 Wrap-Up Awards.

Excerpt:

Because while there is ample evidence of institutional sexism in the comics industry, and more than our fair share of out and out misogynists working in the industry and in fandom, whether or not Stephanie Brown has a display case in the Batcave is a real hard-sell for me as a legitimate grounds for calling out DC for sexism. Batgirl becoming evil is not evidence of misogyny, it’s evidence of sloppy writing. Every time I see a fanboy or fangirl entitlement rant disguised as a serious discussion of gender issues, I cringe, because all those false accusations of sexism confuse the signal to noise ratio to the point where genuine issues of sexism and misogyny get lost, or dismissed out of hand.

Counterpoint

Loren at One Diverse Comic Book Nation responds with his own thoughts.

Excerpt:

However, I do think that when discourse becomes counter productive is when any room for discussion becomes impossible and when all intent is labeled as evil. I do believe that what happened to Steph Brown and how she was honored (or not honored) after she died is misogynist. And, I think that trying to get DC to give her a display case is a noble cause. But, I agree that it should not be argued in terms of DC now being the evil empire of sexism and misogyny. Unfortunately, that’s not going to motivate any change whatsoever. Am I saying sexism and misogyny doesn’t exist there? No. But, I don’t think that’s what drives the company. I don’t think Dan DiDio sits in his office and asks, “How can I screw over women?”

It’s an interesting discussion, I recommend taking a look!

Motley Fool takes a look at Marvel’s prospects for 2007, focusing on the theatrical releases of Ghost Rider, Spider-Man 3 and the second Fantastic Four film:

Marvel projects 2007 per-share earnings of $1.35 to $1.55. It’s a good bet much of that will derive from licensing and merchandise sales from Spider-Man 3, which will be released on May 4 and which looks outstanding. Ghost Rider, if successful, would further lower the bar to meeting expectations.

Meanwhile, Marvel has once again teamed with News Corp.’s Fox to produce Fantastic Four 2. This time, the big screen will bring to life what may be the classic comic-book story. An alien scout for a world-eater comes to Earth. He and the FF do battle with the lives of billions of people at stake. Sound fantastic? That’s why Stan Lee and Jack Kirby named the quartet the Fantastic Four, Fool.

(more…)

I used to work for a nonprofit agency that closed the week between Christmas and New Year’s.  Boy, that was a treat.  Nothing happened the last week of the year anyway, and if there were emergencies (and I had a few) we dealt with them.  Still, it was nice knowing that all I had to deal with were the emergencies, and the rest of the time I could enjoy the ennui that this week brings.  DC’s main line of superhero books was a lot like that in 2006 — finishing up old business, getting ready for the new stuff, and a lot of transitional material making up the difference. 

(more…)

Still concerned with Joe Quesada’s theory of DC wanting to Marvelize, Comic Bloc wonders, “What does that even mean, anyway?”:

“I won’t expound on this at the moment, but the easiest way to see the Marvel formula is to consider the origin stories of their different characters. There is definitely a trend that runs through most of them. And they share such with Batman.”

Bruce Wayne became Batman because of atomic energy? No, wait… Maybe someone else can suggest what it means to emulate the Marvel method…?

“The notion of Batman being, as Mark Waid described him, ‘the zenith of human fortitude and ambition’, has always been a part of the character (even in the Silver Age), but the presentation was very different from a typical Stan n’ Jack (or Stan n’ Ditko) Marvel book. Batman was only an everyman in that he possessed no superpowers. In every other respect Bruce Wayne was very far removed from his audience - he was fabulously wealthy, had an endless supply of cool gadgets, was a father, and dated a string of gorgeous women. One of the big reasons Robin was introduced to the series was to provide a reader identification figure. Batman was who the reader would aspire to be when he grew up; Robin was who he’d aspire to be now. The Marvel characters, by contrast, were deeply flawed. Peter Parker was a nerd whose family was dirt-poor. Bruce Banner was a nerd *and* his ‘powers’ were a curse. The Thing was freakishly strong but also freakishly ugly. And so on. There was always a ‘hook’ for readers (many of whom were also outcasts) to hang onto. If anything, Superman was more ‘relateable’ than Batman because, despite his incredible strength, he had to act like a doofus around the woman he loved. He tapped into the notion of ‘She’d love me if she only knew what I’m REALLY like’. (A notion, by the way, whose removal from the modern Superman mythos has made it poorer.)”

Okay, that sounds right, but can anyone put the Marvel Formula more succinctly?

“Marvel Formula: Eye of Newt, wing of bat, Nightshade, mandrake root, Teredactal Egg, 1 worm from a bottle of Tequila, 3 black pearls. Pinch of Ash from the bark of an ash tree. Mix thuroughly with Blood, sweat & tears of a fanboy.”

Ah. That’s better.

While poking around ComicSpace, I found a link to The Human Torch Art Project, which is pretty much what you’d think: a collection of original art — published, unpublished and commissioned — starring Johnny Storm.

Launched in November 2005, the site features work from a nice cross-section of artists who have tackled the Human Torch, from Dick Ayers and John Byrne to Mike Wieringo and Skottie Young.

Kevin Church is not alone:

I’ve noticed that many fans will refer to superheroes by their “civilian” names (i.e. “When Clark fought Zod” or “When Peter battled Doc Ock”) even though they aren’t referring to them while in their civilian identities: For example, “Clark Kent ducks into the supply room at the Planet and changes into Superman.”

This strikes me as a distinct change from the way things were when I first started reading comics. As a kid, I always felt that Batman and Superman were *always* Batman and Superman — even when not in costume. I did usually think, “Superman disguised as Clark Kent.” Oddly enough, my father would do the same thing — something I’ve noticed most “civilians” do. For instance, when my non-comics reading coworker described the recent FF movie, she would say, “Mr. Fantastic did this, the Thing did that, and the Invisible Woman did this.” Conversely, comics fans would tend to say, “Reed did this, Ben did that, and Sue did this.” Even if the casual fan didn’t know their code names, he or she would more often than not refer to the character by his powers — “Stretchy Guy” or “Rock Guy” for instance.

I’m not sure what this means, but as I said, it’s something I’ve noticed. Do these fans feel somehow “closer” to the characters, which is why they refer to them by their “real” names? Or do the non-fans actually buy into the mythic nature of the characters more?

John Byrne, what do you think?

Nine times out of 10 I will call Superman “Superman” and Clark “Clark”. When Frank Miller and I were chatting about some of the ideas he had for the first DARK KNIGHT mini, one of the things I noticed was that he always refered to Batman as “Bruce” and Superman as “Clark”.

It has to do, I think, with the lessening of the awe factor that used to be so much a part of comicbook mythology. As more and more fans have turned pro, we have seen the introduction of such nicknames as “Supes” and “Bats”, which can only be described as irreverent, at best, and in parallel we have seen the arrival of “Clark” and “Bruce” and “Peter” instead of the superhero names. The latter is, at least, still mostly respectful. I dread the day when the next “generation” transforms these into “Clarkie” and “Brucie” and “Petey”.

Other things that John Byrne dreads: “That terrible racket those kids call music these days,” “What young girls are wearing today” and “Evil Teenage Robots Taking Over The World and Calling Me Johnnie As They Kick Sand In My Face”.