Joining the Liz Sherman and Abe Sapien posters for Hellboy 2 I posted earlier today, it’s the movie’s title character.

Via.

It’s obviously been a long week when I find this thread remarkably funny…

Brian Bendis shares an email from Marvel’s Jen Grunwald, and in the process, demonstrates just how glamorous a life in comics really is:

Hey guys, I’ll most likely be able to get Powers Vol. 11 to the printer this week. One thing though, have you decided what you were doing with the satan cock page? Are we going with one of the ones Patrick modified or were you going to have Nick recolour it. Let me know as soon as you can! Thanks!!

Grunwald responds:

::Sigh::

I know you SAID you were going to post it, but I didn’t think you actually would. How stupid of me.

PS I love my job so much.

Bendis’s Powers partner Mike Oeming also shares his reply to the original email:

Brian, you made me draw this and it was disgusting, and yet Im so proud of it- please let us use the version Pat touched up so the world can see Satans cocks, please
Yes, Im drinking on a wed night, but thats besides the point

Ah, comics. What wonders you offer.

It’s been a few months, so probably time for me to point out that Tommy Lee Edwards’ work on the upcoming 1985 miniseries continues to look rather stunning. He’s showing previews, sketches and talking about the series over on his blog:

I’ve tried not to give too much away on this thing, but I’ll show you as much as possible.  Mark Millar’s script is just great, and I’m giving my all to show it justice.  1985 is six issues packed with Marvel super-hero goodness.  But more than that, it’s an exciting story with a huge heart in the center.  I am very touched by the very real emotional journey the main character (Toby) makes in Mark’s script.  As I’m drawing this book, I find myself getting nostalgic as I truly relate to this sensitive and brave adolescent comic-reader’s life.

Like I’ve said before- 1985 has a bit of an 80’s movie feel to it.  Goonies and Monster Squad come to mind.  Ray Bradbury too.

Recently Chuck Dixon came under fire for a scene in Batman and the Outsiders where he portrayed the character Thunder as “oversensitive” because she was offended when Batman referred to her lesbian relationship with Grace as a “special relationship.” At the time, Batman was berating her as not worthy of being on the team.
(more…)

So I asked a few friends of mine, mostly people I’ve collaborated with, to send me a single image and a short bit of text about one thing that inspires them. It’s a simple question, but I think gives an interesting peek inside how artist’s see the world:

(more…)

One of the benefits of working in the features department of a daily newspaper is getting the book catalogs for the upcoming season. I recently received the spring catalog for both First Second and Farrar Straus Giroux (who handles book distribution for Drawn and Quarterly, as well as owns the nonfiction subdivision Hill and Wang) and I thought I’d be magnanimous and share them with you.

To see what’s on the horizon from these publishers, just click on the jump. (more…)

Since Wednesday, I have been sharing with you my shameful love of 90’s comics. Much of what was printed back then was gimmicky (can you say “holofoil cover?”) and is justifiably scorned. But in that giant recycling bin of comics from the decade that saw the birth of The Real World, there is gold, my friend. There is gold.

On Wednesday, we reviewed Milestone’s Icon and yesterday we looked at Defiant’s Warriors of Plasm. Today, I confess my most scandalous of passions for it is a disgraceful love I bear for the Spider-Man Clone Saga.

Truly, truly shameful.

(more…)

Glenn Hauman at ComicMixaddresses something I was wondering about the other day, specifically what resources a company like Marvel has in place to help freelancers research things like character costumes:

This time I was brought in to meet with Gui Karyo, at the time the CIO of Marvel, in March of 2001 to discuss the status of their archives, digital and otherwise; their upcoming CD-ROM archives, and digital asset management in general for the company. I pointed out that Marvel’s in house archives were a disaster, certainly in comparison to DC’s– Marvel didn’t even have complete printed runs of the comics they published, with gaps as recent as the previous decade. Their film for publication had been stored in a warehouse in Arizona, and hot climates are always where I want to store four decade old film.

One of the things I had suggested was taking the time to build a system for digital asset management, so that the company would know what they had and everyone in the company, plus freelancers and licensees, could access it easily. As a demonstration, I pulled out a thousand dollar comic book– Man Of War Comics #1– and said that I could make a decent argument in either direction on whether Marvel owned the rights or not.

For a variety of reasons, Marvel still hasn’t done it, and as a result their own freelancers are now shelling out money to get reference that the company should be providing. God only knows what it’s like for licensors. I’ll bet that they don’t even deal with Marvel and just look at Corbis instead.

Thanks for the answer, Glenn … and the link to Corbis, which I had fun looking through.

Kurt Busiek will be in Singapore this week giving tips to aspiring writers at the Singapore Writers Festival, along with Mark Waid and Gail Simone, among others. The Malaysia Star profiles Busiek before the event:

An avid comic book fan himself, the father of two girls aged eight and six made his first foray into the comic book industry in 1982, when he noticed something was amiss with the comic book series about Power Man, an indestructible African American superhero, and his gong-fu-fighting sidekick Iron Fist.

“The comic book kept touting that a new writer would be writing the book, but when the next issue came, the editor was the one credited to the story,” he recalled.

It turned out that publisher Marvel Comics could not find a replacement. Busiek, then in university, sent in some drafts, and got the job immediately.

“And I wasn’t even really a fan of Power Man,” the gregarious man said with a chuckle.

He went on to become the man behind many big titles, including Avengers, Iron Man and Justice League Of America. In 1994, he won his first Eisner award, the comic book industry’s equivalent of a Booker Prize, for his work on Marvels, an ordinary man’s view of the Marvel Comics’ superhero world.

Over on his blog today, Marvel Comics Executive Editor Tom Brevoort revealed the new branding for Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s Fantastic Four:

Designed to have more the flavor of a mainstream magazine than a typical comic book, FANTASTIC FOUR once again looks sleek and progressive and cutting edge on the racks. In the same way as when the Ultimate books were first introduced, FF will now not be mistaken for anything else we’re publishing.

Take a look…

(more…)

Neil Gaiman helps a young man propose to his girlfriend:

Simply awesome. Read about it here and here.

Via

Hellboy should be out sometime today. Via

The Rome, Ga. News posted an uncredited editorial on their website on the Gordon Lee trial, which illustrates how ludicrous the whole thing is. It even has some comic references, but this was probably my favorite part:

INDEED, THE SETTING in which all this is taking place turns it into a comic farce. A couple of blocks from where this courtroom “drama” goes on endlessly, and right in front of City Hall in full public view, stands a statue of a fully anatomically endowed Romulus and Remus being suckled by the famed Capitoline wolf. They don’t show a thing that the Picasso picture didn’t also show.

Photos of that statue adorn untold amounts of official brochures, are found on city Web sites and so forth. Indeed, along with the Clock Tower, those undressed little male humans are considered to be the “symbol” of Rome.

So, a question: If a child sees that statue, or such a brochure, or bumps into it on a Web site, should all local officials be prosecuted for distributing harmful materials to minors? Should the Justice League of America be sent in pursuit of these evil doers?

The defense rests … or would, if it weren’t doubled over in the aisles laughing.

EDIT: Thanks to Bully for this photo of the above-referenced statue:

Most comic fans probably know Rich Johnston from his weekly Lying in the Gutters column over at Comic Book Resources, but when he’s not searching for gossip and rumors on the comic industry, he also writes comics. This week sees the release of a new color edition of his graphic novel The Flying Friar, which he did with Thomas Nachlik, Thomas Mauer and now colorist Ian Sharman. It’s kind of a mash-up of the Superman legend with a real 17th century Italian saint, Joseph of Copertino. Originally published by the now-defunct Speakeasy Comics, this new version comes from Markosia Comics.

I emailed Rich a few questions about the new book, potential distribution channels for it and a note he left on Newsarama’s Talk@ section.

JK Parkin: A color edition of Flying Friar hit stores this week. What was the reason for going back and doing a new edition?

Rich Johnston: Markosia offered. That simple. Speakeasy would have done a second print based on demand the year before, but they closed shop first. And Markosia also wanted a colour book - something I could never consider before. Ian Sharman’s work is sensational on this book and becomes a storytelling tool in and of itself. Rather than being merely functional, the initial brownish wash and highlights gives the book a certain age, and the spot colours bring out certain aspects of the story, increasing as the book continues.

JK: Is there anything else added to the new version, besides color?

Rich: It’s been entirely relettered and there’s a stack of extra pages, featuring original script pages with lots and lots of doodles and commentary by me commenting on the creative process involved from concept to colour…

(more…)

(I missed posting last week, and it was down to not being able to get online reliably while at the in-laws for Thanksgiving. Apologies for that, and here is one of two posts I’ll put up today and tomorrow)

So next week is the release of NORTHLANDERS #1, the first issue in my new monthly ongoing book for Vertigo. I have a mini-site for it here, with interviews, previews, advance reviews, cover images, some notes on my research, and solicitation information on the first three issues. Based on the preliminary initial order reports I’ve seen, orders for it were very good. When you head to the shop this week, find a copy of CSN with the book on the front page. Or find one of these promo posters that I *think* were sent to retailers this week (maybe next week).

Here is the first seven pages of the book, annotated. I left off the dialogue and captions for this (you can see them here). Following these seven pages are several non-sequential b/w pages from the next three issues. If you want to look at these in another window, go here.

(more…)

Early in Crisis on Infinite Earths, Harbinger asks the Monitor why they didn’t just recruit all the powerhouses — all the Supermen, Wonder Women, etc.  Back then I kinda wondered that myself. 

The Monitor responded with non-answers (”heroes and villains must work together,” “the menace we deal with is one of emotion”) — basically, nice ways of saying “quiet, you!” After all, it wasn’t unreasonable to suppose that, if the old DC Multiverse contained (theoretically) an infinite number of parallel Kryptons, and if, say, just a hundred of those Kryptons produced a Superman like the Earth-1 and Earth-2 editions we’d come to know, Crisis might have been merely a 48-page blip on DC’s 1985 radar. No need to fill 12 issues with Blue Beetles, Dawnstars, or Solovars.  It’s a little odd, then, to see the villain Monarch holding tryouts for an army of Multiversal Supermen, Wonder Women, etc., just as 15-year-old Tom would have done. 

(more…)

Great White Snark shares some pictures from a comic show in Hayward Calif., where they gave away props from the recent episode of Numb3rs that featured the comic convention:

First, the guys at the admission desk were handing out props from an upcoming episode of Numb3rs, a formulaic CSI-knockoff on CBS that I don’t need to have watched to know that I don’t want to watch it. (You know what I mean.) Anyway. On the November 23 episode, Numb3rs in some way involves comic books. It’s at a comic book store, or some comic book nerd is killed, or something. I don’t know. The details don’t matter. What does matter is that instead of licensing actual comic books to use as props, the show had to commission artists to create cover artwork for imaginary titles. Then the prop guys literally glued the quite-impressive fake covers to the fronts of actual comic books.

And here’s the fun part, for us comic book geeks: figuring out which real comics were considered inconsequential enough to ruin with a slathering of glue. (Any comic book geek will tell you that he instinctively protects even his most financially worthless books.) Victims included Super Soldiers (giggle), a Marvel UK title that’s just as bad as the title suggests. Cable, a spinoff book about one of Marvel’s (formerly?) popular mutant characters. And Youngblood, a spectacularly bad book that was one of the flagship titles of Image Comics, a publishing company that formed when a bunch of talent left Marvel to do their own thing.

I wanted to title this “Orion’s Pope,” but I wasn’t sure if people would get the reference … which is a bit of a stretch anyway. See more Pope art over at his blog.

With all the talk of Marvel, DC and apparently now Top Cow asking Z-Cult FM to remove their books from their listings, Glenn Hauman at ComicMix shares a story about meeting with the higher ups at DC about comic scanning a couple of years ago:

I met with DC’s vice president of legal affairs, Lillian Laserson, and her assistants, Paula Lowitt and Jay Kogen, about the issue of scans available online back in April 2005– over two and a half years ago.

At the two hour meeting which covered legal issues, business cases, media ecology, and public relations, I delivered a spreadsheet to them that was current as of April 1, 2005, showing them how many DC comics had been scanned in and were available online. This wasn’t a spread sheet I created, mind you, it was created by the scanning community showing their progress. And they had made some serious progress: I pointed out that of all the comics published by DC in their (at the time) 70 year history, over 75% of them had already been scanned in and were available online. The numbers were closer to 90% post-Crisis. In short, the genie was already pretty much out of the bottle.

I laid out a full online strategy for them, suggesting that the best thing for them to do would be to get in front and pretend they were leading the parade. Partner with their corporate parent, AOL, and make their content available either freely online or behind AOL’s wall, so that they could expand the brand and readership for their products, and get their comics in front of a much wider audience.

Of course, nothing happened, as Glenn shares in his post.