Yesterday’s Popeye strip, courtesy of The Comics Curmudgeon

Warren Ellis announced on his blog that he’ll be writing a column every Sunday for the not-safe-for-work site SuicideGirls.com:

I’m the new Sunday columnist at suicidegirls.com. Once a week, they will be paying me actual money to write The Sunday Hangover, wherein I will basically be emptying my brain on to the screen. Which, frankly, may be just as disgusting as it sounds.

I’ll run the full press release from SG later. I start July 1.

I totally dig this description of Richard Sala’s character, Judy Drood:

Mad Night and The Grave Robber’s Daughter are both “Judy Drood, Girl Detective” adventures, and I’d recommend them together as the best, most definitive gateway into Sala’s work. If Nancy Drew is a wholesome girl sleuth, Judy Drood is a hard-cussing, fist throwing, breaking and entering, incorrigible snoop. She’s pathologically paranoid, no matter how extravagantly evil the conspiracies (always plural) around her really are. Kasper Keene is her hapless, probably virginal, vested-and-bespectacled sidekick.

That’s from The Groovy Age of Horror, who will be interviewing Sala soon.

Update: And by soon, I mean today.

Entertainment Weekly’s website has the complete back-up tale from the upcoming first issue of Oni’s Tek Jansen series. They also interviewed the story’s writer, Jim Massey, who talks about the back-up story, Horn Like Me!, which features aliens that sport, naturally, horns:

I was just looking for some physical characteristic that I could apply to this alien race that had no intrinsic worth to the value of a person, but was just an excuse for bias and prejudice. Originally, it was gonna be Green Like Me!, and it was going to be like green skin versus blue skin. And my editor and I talked about it, and we felt like it was a little too on the nose. So we took it away from skin color, and just made it the horns. And honestly, the inspiration for the story itself is Dr. Seuss’ Sneetches book, where they’ve got the Star-Belly Sneetches and the Plain-Belly Sneetches and they hate other because one has stars and the other doesn’t. One of the shops in the background of a scene [in Horn Like Me!] is even named Sneetch & Sons. The title Horn Like Me! is lifted from the famous Black Like Me book, where the white journalist [John Howard Griffin] goes undercover in the South as a black man and gets a firsthand experience of racism. I wanted to echo that in the title, just to point out the ridiculousness of it all.

They also spoke to John Layman about what it’s like working with Stephen Colbert:

If that sounds like a Colbert-ian zinger, it should: Colbert went through the script line by line. Says Layman, ”We’d get notes, like ‘Oh, you know, I was rereading this on my porch Saturday…’ I’ve had editors who don’t pay that close attention. There’s quite a bit of back-and-forth because I think Stephen Colbert is a geek.”



Earlier this week, Dwayne McDuffie told Newsarama that his Justice League roster is “pretty much set for the time being, with two exceptions, both already in the works long before I came on the book.” This isn’t going to be a who-are-the-exceptions post, although I want to touch on that a little.

(more…)

Over at John Byrne’s Forum, the fans have realized what the problem with Aquaman is:

” I just finished reading the Aquaman Showcase book the other day, and I noticed that in 500 pages of comics,  Aquaman throws a punch maybe three times. Every so often he’ll kick a weapon out of someone’s hand, but for the most part, he lets his army of ‘finny friends’ do all the dirty work. No wonder folks think he’s lame!”

“At least Namor hits stuff! Viva la Sub-Mariner!”

“One of the reasons I couldn’t like the 90s Fox Spider-Man show. I don’t think he threw one punch the whole time. Not the kinda Spider-Man I want to see.”

That’s the problem with superheroes. Not enough hitting.

Paul O’Brien looks at Marvel’s wonderful May sales figures and has an interesting explanation for them:

It was a quiet month for new titles, though, with one new ongoing series in the shape of MARVEL ADVENTURES IRON MAN. There were also three new miniseries - SILVER SURFER: REQUIEM, SPIDER-MAN: FAIRY TALES and the first Marvel Illustrated series, LAST OF THE MOHICANS.

But a shortage of big new titles doesn’t prevent Marvel from dominating the direct market once again - perhaps because, for once, almost all Marvel’s books shipped. The biggest title to miss shipping was SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN, which nobody will lose any sleep over.

As usual, lots of interesting commentary at the link.

The comic blogosphere seems to grow larger every day and just like comics, sometimes it’s pretty easy to get a little lost. “Meanwhile …” will act as your map, pointing out what interesting discussions are happening out there while you’re reading Blog@Newsarama.

Now on with the links.

Meanwhile Part 2 of 2

Part 1

(more…)

The Comic Book Bin talks with Buffy the Vampire Slayer artist Georges Jeanty, who confesses he hadn’t watched the TV series before he agreed to the assignment. But he quickly remedied that: “There is a deep-rooted honesty about the show. Yes, it’s juggling horror and comedy, which is tough for any show, but at its core, it’s got so much heart.  You feel for these characters. They become a part of your life, and that’s something I definitely missed out not watching it every week.“

In this week’s slightly late edition of PWCW, Douglas Wolk provides his MoCCA report:

MoCCA’s audience is more of a fine art crowd than most other conventions’, and the bags shoppers were carrying around at the show were as full of limited-edition prints and objets d’art as they were of books, comics and minicomics. But the mainstream comics world is now starting to build bridges to the festival’s art comics, too: Wizard magazine, the comics fan and trade publication, and the new magazine-about-comics, Comic Foundry, and even DC’s Vertigo and Minx imprints had a booth in the upstairs hall, where creators Percy Carey (Sentences) and G. Willow Wilson (Cairo) put in appearances. Some popular tables featured cartoonists who straddle the mainstream and indie worlds, including writer Brian Wood, artists Cameron Stewart, Zander Cannon, Rick Veitch and Becky Cloonan, who debuted “Minis,” a collection of her early work.

There’s even a nice little photo diary. Also in this week’s edition: Brigid Alverson writes about Gon being republished; Will Moss talks to Rob G and Rick Spears about their new series, Repo; Moss also talks to Eddie Campbell (part one); Kai-Ming Cha talks to the folks at Go! Comi; and Trevor Soponis talks to Mike Allred.

Bowing to a request from the Iranian embassy, the Bangkok International Film Festival has decided to drop Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis from its schedule:

“We have had a request from the ambassador to reconsider the screening of ‘Persepolis,’ and since this could be a matter of international relations, we decided not to show the film,” Chattan Kunjara Na Ayutthaya of Tourism Authority of Thailand, said.

“It is a good movie in artistic terms, but we have to consider other issues that might arise here.”

“Persepolis” was originally slated to be the fest’s opening film on July 19. With the cancellation, the festival still has no opening film with only three weeks left.

The great Spanish cartoonist Max (The Extended Dream of Mr. D, Bardin the Superrealist) has his own Web site up now, featuring some really nifty animated menus.

Nothing really more to this other than to say Max’s work is really great and I wish more of it were available in the U.S.
via Flog

Over on her LiveJournal, Lea Hernandez announces that the sequel to her Rumble Girls series, Runaway Lightning Ohmry, has started its run over at WebComics Nation. Page one is up now, and page two will follow tomorrow. Go check it out.

Insipired by David Welsh’s latest Flipped column, in which he revisits several ongoing series, John Jakala revisits some manga series he stopped reading and wonders, what went wrong?

Battle Royale - The first manga I dropped before finishing, I believe. At first I was enjoying the tale of teenagers trapped on an island and forced to kill each other (in the same way you might enjoy a mindless exploitation flick — what new gruesome method of death will they dream up next?), but after reading the highly superior original novel, the over-the-top violence and gratuitous sex seemed even more unnecessary and exaggerated than before. (Keith Giffen’s reworked script, which added a nonsensical reality TV angle to the story and tried too hard to be shocking, certainly didn’t help.)

Made it to: Volume 5, but only because I was still preordering my comics online back then; I’d wanted to drop it after volume 3.

While I have tons of unfinished manga on my shelves, that’s more due to lack of finances on my part than a disinterest in a particular series.

What about you though? When did your favorite series jump the shark?

Update: Johanna offers her thoughts on the matter.

While several members of the Blog@ staff — JK Parkin, Graeme McMillan, Carla Hewitt and Tom Bondurant — will be attending Comic-Con International next month, I’ll be dutifully holding down the fort at Blog@ Central. So, somebody better grab me a copy of 5, the limited-edition book by some of my favorite artists: Becky Cloonan, Gabriel Ba, Fabio Moon, Rafael Grampa and Vasilis Lolos. That lovely cover is by Grampa.

“We’ve only printed 2,000 of these so they’ll go pretty fast, especially considering they are split between three continents,” Cloonan writes on her blog. “It also has no words so there is no need for translation; comics for everyone! No matter where you live you will understand the underlying message of the book: That we love comics with everything we have. We eat and breathe comics. We dream of comics when we sleep and we make them while we’re awake.”

Well, this is just awful. The Ohio University Post reports that Universe of Superheroes, the terrific store in Athens, Ohio, where I used to buy my comics, was gutted by fire Sunday.

Owners Tom Green and Todd Grace estimate they lost $100,000 in merchandise. Insurance is expected to cover the $200,000 in damages to the store and the apartments above.

Neighboring businesses have been pitched in to do what they can, with Donkey Coffee and Espresso giving free coffee to store employees while they try to come up with ideas to raise money to replace the lost stock. Luke Potter Photography, located next door, is allowing the comic-store employees to sell salvaged merchandise out of a spare room.

Related: More newspaper coverage 

This one’s for Augie De Blieck Jr., and all of the letterers, web cartoonists and font fanatics: Writing for The Associated Press, Brian Murphy declares his love for Comic Sans — the bane of typography aficionados the world over — and profiles two people with less questionable tastes. Namely, Dave and Holly Combs, founders of BanComicSans.com:

And what, may we ask, can muster such passion against an innocent typeface? It’s simply Holly and Dave’s belief that Comic Sans is the weed of the graphic world: sprouting up everywhere and in all the wrong places.

What really sets them off is when the playful curves of Comic Sans — designed to mimic classic hand-lettered comic book text — are used for serious messages. Like a quotation from Scripture (Hebrews 6:1) on the window of a religious bookstore. Or on a funeral announcement.

They grimaced when it appeared on a flier for a drug to treat irritable bowel syndrome.

“I’ve never had it before,” said Dave, 33. “But I bet anyone who has it wouldn’t think it was very humorous.”

“Look around,” added Holly, 30. “I mean it’s everywhere and in very inappropriate places.”

But Murphy stands by the beleaguered font, admitting he uses it to write everything. Even a book. Oh, Brian Murphy, you poor, misguided man.

Of all the reports from last weekend’s MoCCA festival, I think this one is my favorite (it’s certainly the most adorable): On his LiveJournal, cartoonist Dean Trippe posts photos of Butterfly’s experiences at the festival.

Related: Hope Larson’s MoCCA “kiss book”

Neil Gaiman and his daughter, Madeleine, are currently on the set of Hellboy 2 in Budapest, and Neil has turned his blog over to his daughter. Be sure to check out the photos from when she took over the set.

With little warning to retailers, your local comic shop awoke the morning of April 14th to the loud ‘airhorn’-like announcement of the death of a beloved Marvel character. Some managed to up their orders on Captain America #25 in time, others floundered under the public pressure of a book only few were expecting to be on major news outlets.

To be honest, the now infamous ‘Death of Captain America’ obviously should have been broadcast live with news makers drawing attention to the demise of such an iconic character. It brought in business, called attention to the fantastic recent run on the title by Ed Brubaker and got Civil War into a few more hands. All in all a win for our team, just one I’m sure comic shop owners wished they’d been a little more prepared for.

This preparation can be both a blessing and a curse; at my store, we got advance word that a particular issue of Amazing Spider-Man would be a major sensation when it turned out that it was either the wrong issue or the wrong intel, leaving us with extra copies making some wonderful shelf decoration.

But never fear, True Believers! A recent reveal on the Diamond retailer’s website gave some warning regarding the last issue of the Fallen Son: the Death of Captain America mini-series. Now, I discounted this whole thing due to some so-so stories (though I’ll fully admit that the ‘Captain America’ issue was pretty good), but sources say that the last in the set staring Iron Man is sure ot be one of those highly publicized media events. There are threats of just as much media attention to this as there were to such hits as the reveal of Batwoman’s sexual orientation or, dare I say, the death of Cap itself.
(more…)