Writing for Wizard’s website, indie (and future Minx) creator Josh Howard defends Wizard:

One could argue that if only indies got more coverage, they would sell better and thus take a more prominent role in the industry. I suppose that’s a fair argument. But to put the blame solely at the feet of Wizard and other comic news outlets is unfair. Everyone deserves their share of the blame, from fans to retailers to the creators themselves. If fans began to buy more independent titles and sales began to compete with the likes of X-Men, you can bet Wizard would sit up and take notice. And if more indie creators would put out quality, well-produced product that actually appealed to a larger audience outside of their own friends, then readers might feel more comfortable parting with their hard-earned cash. I mean, a story about your pathetic childhood or how the world just doesn’t understand you might feel like a bold artistic statement, but really…no one cares. There’s art, and then there’s just shooting yourself in the foot.

Perhaps the funniest part of the criticism directed toward Wizard can be found on Internet message boards. Usually about once every month or so you’ll see the obligatory “let’s trash Wizard” thread. But take a quick look around at all the other topics on the board and you’ll see that they’re talking about exactly what Wizard is talking about—the mainstream. Countless threads devoted to the latest leaked photos from the next Spider-Man movie or what’s going on in Marvel’s Civil War. But go to the Independent forums of any comic book Website and it’s practically a ghost town—an average of two or three replies per thread, and those are usually by the book’s creators saying “Please read my book!” The Internet is a place where fans have complete freedom to make their voices heard, and the voices are saying resoundingly, “We love mainstream comics.”

Later, Wizard interviews Howard about his new Sasquatch anthology with the proper journalistic attitude, as the following “question” shows:

[New Howard book, The Lost Books of] Eve came into the office, and the collective response was like, “Wait a minute…Wha?” There’s so many ideas and so much stuff going on in that book, and it was so different than Dead @ 17. Flipping between that and Dead, it seems that your fans and people in general will really be able to see you be more versatile.

Here’s a swell find for budding cartoonists (courtesy of Dirk). Disney animator Walt Stanchfield used to teach life-drawing classes at the Disney studios, and created a number of useful handouts for his students. Animation Meat has the first 65 handouts up in .pdf form, but Leo Brodie has gone one better. He’s taken the bulk of those handouts and transformed them into a book, entitled “Gesture Drawing for Animation.” He explains why:

As I was reading the notes and trying to absorb as much as I could, I thought I might understand them better if it were all laid out in sequence, with basic topics followed by more complex ideas. I wanted to see his ideas grouped by subject so I could compare the ideas. In other words, I wanted the topics to be arranged like a normal book. So I’ve re-arranged bits and pieces from the handouts into cohesive chapters, while taking the liberty to eliminate redundancy and make minor edits just as book editor would.

Whether you’re interested in animation or not, either version is worth checking out.

Noel Murray over at The Onion’s AV Club wonders why most contemporary comic strips aren’t collected in book form these days:

9 Chickweed Lane’s been around for nearly 15 years, but I’ve only been reading it for about two, so I went looking for some collections to fill in the gaps. No luck. Outside of one book of McEldowney’s cat themed strips—not my favorite—nothing appears to be available, new or used. It used to be that nearly everyone with a syndicated comic strip got a book deal, even if it was only for little Fawcett pocket paperbacks; but these days, only a handful of titles—Zits, Get Fuzzy, Mutts, a few others—are collected with any kind of regularity. There’d be a riot if any local Style Section editor tried to dump Blondie or Hi And Lois, but when’s the last time you saw either of those strips on a book store shelf? (Not that I’d necessarily want to read a year’s worth of 21st century Blondie in book form, but isn’t it odd that one of the longest-running strips on the comics page doesn’t have any wide-ranging publishing prescence to speak of?)

I suspect it’s because Get Fuzzy, etc., have large, proven fan bases that will actively go out and buy the collections whereas Chickweed is just too much on the periphery for Andrews McMeel to put a collection together. And the older, more traditional strips tend to be taken for granted by most readers. The folks who like Blondie are content with merely following it in the newspaper. They’re not interested in getting out of their barcalounger and heading to the book store to buy a compilation.

Speaking of comic strips, I hope everyone noticed this clever little For Better or For Worse parody by Lio cartoonist Mark Tatulli (seen above)? Finally someone has the guts to say what we’ve all been thinking.

Paramount Pictures has released two new posters for the Transformers movie, featuring Optimus Prime and Megatron. USA Today talks with screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci about the film, which opens July 4. “We always modeled Optimus Prime after King Arthur,” Kurtzman tells the newspaper. “His design [from the '80s toys and cartoon] was so iconic we couldn’t make too many changes.”

Virgin Comics – Getting on that multimedia licensing thing in the worst way possible:

According to Variety, Nash Entertainment is working with Virgin Comics to develop a graphic novel based on the Masked Magician made famous in the ’90s Fox series of TV specials, Breaking the Magician’s Code: Magic’s Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed.  The Fox Reality Channel is planning to re-run the five Magician specials this spring.

The series was criticized by professional magicians who, understandably, didn’t like their biggest secrets revealed.  The real Masked Magician turned out to be illusionist Val Valentino, but now a fictional version is in development who will use magic to solve crimes and wears a mask to hide from the law.

Nash CEO, Bruce Nash wants to use the graphic novel to take to studios and networks to attempt to get interest in a series or film based on the property. Nash was quoted as saying, “It’s a cross between ‘Darkman’ and the movie ‘FX’.”

Yes! A cross between two cult movies that never really found their audiences! How can this seem even less appealing? The final sentence of the story reveals the answer:

Nash is currently involved in various TV and film projects including Who Wants to Be a Superhero? 

Really, you just knew that there was no way that I’d be able to pass up this blog post from Tom Brevoort, didn’t you?:

Everybody in this industry has a real love-hate relationship with the Internet. You wouldn’t believe how often we all tell one another to stop going online, and to stop worrying about what’s being said–all at the same time we’re all looking online at what’s being said. It’s like an addiction.

It can be a wonderful thing to get the kind of instantaneous feedback that the Internet provides. But it can also be crippling. Like those who work in almost any entertainment media, the people who make comic books are simultaneously supremely confident and emotionally needy.

And when the relationship goes wrong, it can destroy careers. We’ve seen a couple of creators who became so reviled after they melted down publicly on the Internet that it began to affect the sales of their books. In other instances, creators were so traumatized by the harshness of fan reactions to their work that they retreated entirely, and some of them even left the business for awhile.

Much more in the link, but no commentary from me. I’m sure you can all fill in my particular blanks on this subject.

The ComicBloc kicks off its “Inside the Comics Writers Studio” series with an interview with J. Torres, who discusses his career, the work process, and the complexities of writing all-ages titles, like Teen Titans Go! and Degrassi: Extra Credit: “In the first year of Teen Titans Go!, we had to shelve a Dr. Light story because at the time the DCU version of that character was involved in Identity Crisis and considering what he did it was sort of understandable.”

Australia’s Rave Magazine talks with writer-artist Ben Templesmith about his collaboration with Warren Ellis, Fell: “Warren is pretty much the only writer I can honestly say I’d jump at working with on name alone. I am a slobbering baboon of a fan of his work thanks to what Transmet and some of his other books did to my frail young mind a few years ago.”

Reuters discovers manga — “a Japanese style of comic packed with big-eyed, wild-haired characters” — has infiltrated the UK, and is even adapting the works of Shakespeare.

Yeah, it’s an odd little overview that tries to cover too much territory in about 20 paragraphs. But it does manage to provide some figures about Tokyopop’s performance in the UK:

“We have gone from nothing in the UK to a business that doubles every year,” said Dennis McGuirk, director of Tokyopop’s British operations, which opened more than three years ago.

The company, which publishes translated versions of Japanese manga books as well as stories penned by non-Japanese artists, generated revenue of 2 million pounds ($3.93 million) last year in Britain alone and looks set to make 4 million pounds in 2007.

Other than that, it’s … well, odd.

And he’s brought Spider Woman along for the ride …

(Thanks, Tracy).

This Associated Press article begins by focusing on Virgin Comics’ newest title, Virulents, but quickly shifts to a general profile of the year-old venture between Richard Branson, Deepak Chopra and Shekhar Kapur.

Less than a week after rumors of a Justice League movie comes talk — and very iffy talk at that — from JoBlo.com that Warner Bros. could be preparing Supergirl for a return to the big screen.

The website cites a tip from someone called “Lip” that the studio already has commissioned a script, and that Battlestar Galactica‘s Tricia Helfer is on the list of possible stars.

Of course, Helfer turns 33 next month, which makes her a little old for the role of Supergirl. Not that I’m questioning “Lip,” or anything.

However, even JoBlo is a little skeptical, wondering whether “our source is somehow confusing it with Wonder Woman, rendering this entire rumor moot.”

Supergirl’s previous venture into theaters was in the plain-awful 1984 movie starring Helen Slater, Faye Dunaway and Peter O’Toole. It grossed $14 million, less even than Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.

The Glyph Comics Awards Committee once again offers fans the opportunity to vote for their favorite black comics story in the 2007 Glyph Comics Fan Award. The 2007 Glyph Comics Awards ceremony will be held during the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention in Philadelphia, May 18-19, and the Fan Award will be among the honors given out to those who represent the best in black comics. This year’s nominees are:

• Black Panther: The Bride, Reginald Hudlin, Scot Eaton & Klaus Janson
• Crisis Aftermath: The Spectre, Will Pfeifer & Cliff Chiang
• Firestorm the Nuclear Man #28-32, Stuart Moore, Jamal Igle & Keith Champagne
• New Avengers #22, Brian Michael Bendis & Leinil Francis Yu
• Storm, Eric Jerome Dickey, David Yardin & Lan Medina and Jay Leisten & Sean Parsons

Fans can vote at the ECBACC website, www.ecbacc.com, for any of the above five nominees. Alternate choices not on the official ballot can be e-mailed to rich.watson@gmail.com. Please note that this e-mail address is ONLY for write-in choices not on the official ballot. Any write-in ballots with any of the five above nominees will be discarded!

The deadline for the Fan Award voting is April 15, 2007.

(more…)

Thanks to Blake Bell’s super Best of/Most of site for the heads-up about an interesting art show, Other Heroes, debuting next week at Jackson State University in Jackson, Miss., featuring some of the who’s who among African American comics creators, characters and archetypes. Among the familiar creators featured in the exhibition: Kyle Baker, Denys Cowan, Keith Knight, Jackie Ormes, Brian Stelfreeze, Lance Tooks and Trevor Von Eeden.

Check out Eye Trauma Comix for a full list of creators for the Other Heroes show as well as preliminary information about OUT OF SEQUENCE: Underrepresented Voices in American Comics, a fall 2008 exhibition at the University of Illinois.

The headline above — the last five words anyway — is what caught my attention about this Journal-Inquirer feature on Stephen Starger, who collaborated with J. David Spurlock on the biography, Wally’s World: The Brillant Life and Tragic Death of Wally Wood, the World’s 2nd Best Comic Book Artist. How the book project began was a matter of serendipity: A chance meeting with Wally Wood’s brother, Glenn, who took pictures of his wedding (Glenn’s wife, a retired probate judge, married Starger and his wife in 1995).

Question: Is Wood really “second best”?

If you’re as big a fan of Jennifer Shiman’s 30-second bunny parodies of current and classic films, here’s a two-fer for you Spandex comic folk: Adaptations of Spider-Man 1 and 2, along with the appropriate Stan Lee cameo…

Check out more of her cool toons, on her Angry Alien Productions Web site… BTW, on tap for parody fodder before year’s end: Die Hard, March of the Penguins and, you guessed it, Spider-Man 3!

On his blog, writer and actor Wil Wheaton — Wesley Crusher of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame — reveals that he’s writing a story for the second volume of Tokyopop’s Star Trek: The Manga, which stars the characters from the original TV series:

Initially, I was terrified at the prospect of creating and writing this story, but this voice in my head kept saying, “Dude, this would be so cool! Come on, man, let’s do this!” Ultimately, I decided that if I’m going to truly call myself a Writer, and if I’m truly going to write that novel someday, I’ve got to tackle fiction sooner or later . . . and what better way to test myself than with characters and a universe that I already know?

Of course, as soon as I got to seriously working on it (and had Kirk say“Captain’s Log …” for the first time) I realized that even though I have a bit of a safety net with this project, the very fact that I am writing an original series Star Trek story means that the safety net is actually built out of barbed wire. And there are alligators crawling around on it, and monkeys with BB blowguns are constantly shooting at me while I walk across the high wire from “I have an idea” to “Okay, it’s done!” Thanks to the tireless efforts of my friend Andrew, I haven’t had to worry too much about falling off the wire (and I owe Andrew a huge debt of gratitude, because at one point I was ready to leap off the wire, and he talked me into staying on it. In fact it’s not a stretch at all to say that this project wouldn’t exist without Andrew’s participation, and since I know he won’t accept the credit he deserves, I’ll just give it here) and throughout this entire process, what hasn’t killed me has definitely made me stronger, so to speak.

The second volume is scheduled for September release, according to Amazon.

(Link via Japanator.)

On his Marvel.com blog, Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada shows off a 3-D depiction of Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum, created by Jason Christensen and based on the illustration in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.

There have been so many shocks and surprises and the internet just can’t be broken anymore. It’s become tougher, like when you tear a phone book into pieces and eventually it just won’t rip anymore. How do you tell who’s who and what’s what in this new world out there? Don’t worry. I’m here to comfort and guide. Welcome to the world outside B@N. Welcome to Meanwhile….

Well, I got good news and bad news.

The good news is that I just got engaged to the woman I love this weekend.

The bad news is that because of that I didn’t really have that much time to work on Meanwhile. I still have the links, but the commentary had to be cut a little short. I’ll be back to normal next week (Maybe…I am planning a wedding after all.).

(more…)

UK’s Sunderland Echo spotlights Bryan Talbot, focusing on his graphic novel, Alice in Sunderland, which delves into the history of the area and its connection to Lewis Carrol and other figures.