Saturday, May 18
RSS feed Subscribe to Blog@Newsarama
OR
Subscribe to RSS feed via email:
Powered by FeedBlitz
Just in case Batman: The Dark Knight requires more promotion, Warner Bros. has released a full gallery of photos — some of which we haven’t seen before — and posters.
The movie opens on July 18.
Related: The end credits of The Dark Knight will include a tribute to Heath Ledger
Editor’s Note: DC Comics President Paul Levitz returns to Blog@ with some thoughts on John Nee’s departure from DC.
by Paul Levitz
Change is always confusing and traumatic, and the downside of DC’s relatively stable structure is we may handle change more creakily than some other places. Listen to the noise out there, and any change is always the tip of some iceberg-size contortion, analyzed with all the joy of a pack of old Kremlinologists. Most of the time, though, it ain’t so complex.
After 15 years of keeping an amazingly wide variety of plates spinning, John Nee decided to leave DC and try something calmer, like alligator wrestling. John’s most recent title was Senior Vice President-Business Development, but his job was basically being John Nee–knowing people everywhere, connecting them to DC, and making things happen. So when he announced his departure, it necessitated some change and juggling, not all of which has been finalized as I write this blog entry. But between his solid staff and the wider DC team, it’ll sort out soon.
Always happy to amuse the Kremlinologists, but most of the time there aren’t very exciting secrets behind our shifts. Nothing to match whether Andropov or Gorbachev were standing in the sweet spot on the reviewing stand, though.
Usually I can be distracted simply by the shiny and sparkly, but last week it was an apparently high proportion of miniseries in DC’s September superhero solicitations. Specifically, DC has solicited 20 issues’ worth of DCU miniseries to 29 issues’ worth of ongoing DCU series; which works out to 39% of DC’s new-material superhero output. I didn’t have a lot of data last week to put that in proper context, but I’ve been working on it.
Boy, have I ever….
* * *
Editor’s note: When I opened up the package from First Second books containing a review copy of Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, my first thought was, “Wow, this looks really good.” After flipping through the gigantic comic book textbook, my second thought was, “Wow, I’m woefully under-qualified to review this.”
So I dropped an email to Matt Silady. Not only is Matt the creator of the Eisner-nominated The Homeless Channel, but he’s also a teacher at the California College of the Arts. Matt was gracious enough to review the book for us …
by Matt Silady
When I was teaching eighth grade in central Illinois, textbooks were the bane of my existence. At best, they contained a few decent articles and a nice illustration or two. At worst, they were curriculum-controlling paper bricks that prevented the kind of flexible and inventive lesson planning necessary to tackle a classroom of hyperactive thirteen year olds. Each new class of kids brought its own set of challenges and the one-size-fits-all mentality of traditional textbooks was no formula for success. As far as I was concerned, the best place to keep a textbook was at the bottom of a locker hidden away for nine glorious months.
So, it was with a bit of trepidation that I initially approached First Second’s new comic book textbook. Marketed as “a definitive course from concept to comic in 15 lessons,” the book had a lot to live up to. Fortunately, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures has three aces up its sleeve: Matt Madden, Jessica Abel, and a very promising companion website supported by First Second Books.
Plans in Cleveland to celebrate the history of Superman have run into problems of Kryptonian proportions.
The Cleveland Free Times reports that efforts to restore the Glenville-neighborhood home of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel and possibly establish a museum are caught in the middle of a dispute between the president of the city’s convention and visitors bureau and the ousted chairman of the Superman Committee.
Earlier this week Michael Levin, former chairman of the committee overseeing the “Summer of Superman” festivities celebrating the 70th anniversary of Superman, sent out an email criticizing Positively Cleveland President Dennis Roche for replacing him with local realtor Richard Pace:
“I have it all set up to go,” says Levin. “I have all the money raised. But Dennis can’t make any money that way. Instead, they’re going to scam as much money as possible and screw it up. Watch, they’ll go to the Port Authority to get money to build the museum and Pace will design it. This doesn’t smell fishy, this smells like dead fish.”
The Free Times notes that Terry Stewart — president and CEO of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and former president of Marvel Entertainment — also is now involved, “negotiating with his former nemesis, DC Comics, for its blessing to host Superman events in town.”
Roche, who asserts he had no real influence on the appointment of Levin’s replacement, says, “We want this thing to grow. I don’t think a museum is achievable. But over the course of four or five years we could put together a large annual festival that draws people in from out of town to spend money in Cleveland.”
Early reviews swoon for Dark Knight – and The Joker
Batman: The Dark Knight doesn’t open for another three weeks, but the first reviews are starting to appear. And they’re incredibly positive.
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine gives the sequel three-and-a-half out of four stars, describing it as “raw and elemental,” and marveling at how director Chris Nolan “brings pop escapism whisper-close to enduring art.”
And at AICN, a reviewer calls Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker “truly one for the books.” That’s something echoed by Travers, who dubs the late actor “mad-crazy-blazing brilliant” in the role.
On that note, Nolan talks to Wired a bit about his vision for The Joker:
The director wasn’t interested in plumbing the murky origins of the Joker himself — the Clown Prince is more a Loki-like force of chaos. “He’s like the shark in Jaws,” Nolan explains. “The Joker cuts through the film, he’s incredibly important, but he’s not a guy with a backstory. He’s a wild card.”
It’s a good article that focuses primarily on the technical aspects of filmmaking, and Nolan’s desire to to shun digital effects: “Anything you notice as technology reminds you that you’re in a movie theater.”
In other Dark Knight, and Joker, news, the viral-marketing campaign continues for the film, which opens in North America on July 18.
Who watches the length of Watchmen?
Watchmen director Zack Snyder says he’s editing down the first director’s cut of the film, which now runs about three hours long — and seems to indicate he’s at odds with the studio over length.
“The balancing act for me is, you want the movie as tight as possible for, I don’t know why, I guess so people can enjoy it,” Snyder tells SciFi Wire. “But for me, the hardest part is just, when is it not Watchmen anymore? I don’t think that’s a danger, but it’s a thing that I am trying to be the gatekeeper of while other forces conspire to say, ‘No. Length, length, length. Playability.’ Whatever the hell that means.”
He goes on to say how everyone who made the movie loves it, and how wonderful the experience was. But then:
And so then you come back from that experience, and you go to the studio, and the studio’s cool, don’t get me wrong, but they don’t love it like we do. Right? It’s like just a movie, like, ‘Oh, we have this movie, Watchmen, and it’s f–king long.’ Like, ‘What are these superheroes? They look crazy.’ So you have that experience. So for me, right now, I’m in the middle of that. So for me to go to Comic-Con is to get a chance to go back to people that love it.”
Watchmen, based on the miniseries by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, is set to open on March 6, 2009.
That’s according to Fantagraphics’ Mike Baehr:
The Summer 2008 issue of Art Source, the newsletter of the Seattle-based arts organization the Artist Trust, contains a feature article by curator Cynthia Rose (read a preview on the Artist Trust website) which profiles Epileptic/Babel creator David B. and highlights his upcoming visit to Seattle in mid-August, which is co-sponsored by the Alliance Française de Seattle and includes, of course, a stop and art show at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery. Stay tuned for our complete announcement with all the details of this exciting multi-day celebration of bandes desinées, which will also include a talk given by our own Kim Thompson, a screening of Tintin et Moi at the Northwest Film Forum, and a panel discussion with David B., Jim Woodring, Peter Bagge and Joe Sacco at the Henry Art Museum.
Great news. It would be better if he were coming to the East Coast where I could potentially see him, but still, great news.
Sean McKeever posts an image from this week’s DC Nation column, knowingly asking, “I wonder what all this could mean??”
I have a few questions of my own. First off, the guy in white, next to Blue Beetle … is that Kid Eternity? Also, who do you think the blacked out characters are? And finally, is Kid Devil giving anyone else a Nightcrawler vibe?
The other day, Michael Maslin reported that fellow gag cartoonist and New Yorker contributor Ed Arno (no relation to Peter Arno) passed away last month, apparently of old age. He was 92:
I met Ed Arno only twice. The first time was in late 1979, at the opening for an exhibit of his work at the Austrian Institute in Manhattan. He told me that my last name meant “grape” in a foreign language (sadly, I can’t remember which one). We ran into each other again at Arnold Newman’s New Yorker-cartoonist group-photograph shoot in September, 1997. In the published photograph, Ed’s the one to the extreme left of the group, wearing the Prussian helmet, having a heck of a good time pouring himself a glass of champagne.
Link via Mike Lynch (and you’ll have to click on that link if you want the punchline to the above cartoon. I’m too lazy to type it out).
Earlier this week I was working on a post that summarized a few less-than-enthusiastic reactions to the Harvey Award nominations. One nomination in particular kind of stuck out at me — the nomination for the blog Meanwhile…Comics! in the “Best Biographical, Historical or Journalistic Presentation” category.
Please don’t get me wrong here — John, Jason and Scott, the contributors to the blog, are doing some fun stuff over there. My question had nothing to do with whether their content was worthy or not to be nominated. No, the question I had was how a site that launched in April made the list when nominations for the Harveys were due in March.
Back on Jan. 24, the Harvey Awards put out a call for nominations. You can find the press release on their news page. Here’s the first paragraph:
The Executive Committees of the Harvey Awards and the Baltimore Comic-Con are proud to present the official Nomination Ballot for this year’s Harvey Awards . Named in honor of the late Harvey Kurtzman, one of the industry’s most innovative talents, the Harvey Awards recognize outstanding work in comics and sequential art. Ballots are due for submission by March 21st.
I thought maybe I was missing something, that perhaps the site had existed at another URL or in another form, so I emailed Jason, one of the three bloggers who contributes to the site. He confirmed Meanwhile … Comics didn’t launch until April 7. (Here’s their first post). Jason said he was stunned by the nomination, too, especially as his site has had less than 1,000 page views since its inception.
I figured maybe there was an unannounced deadline extension … or even an announced one that I just couldn’t find anywhere on their website. So I emailed Johanna Draper Carlson, who helps out the Harvey Award folks with proofreading and fact checking … which eventually led me to Paul McSpadden, administrator of the Harvey Awards. He confirmed on Wednesday that there was no extension of last year’s Harvey eligibility period.
So, last night I received an email from Jason. He said Paul informed him their nomination has been officially withdrawn due to a clerical error, and the Harveys would issue a press release about it in a day or two.
Jason gave some more details on what exactly happened:
Well, Paul actually explained it pretty well over the phone. When they received some ballots by email, the formatting caused some of the lines to carry over to the next line, which made it hard to decipher some of the nominations. Add to that the fact that there was a Milton Caniff biography released last year titled “Meanwhile…” by RC Harvey, which was listed on a chunk of ballots from the same company (I’m assuming Fantagraphics who produced it, but I didn’t ask). And, not only were ballots due by March 21…but books and sites were only eligible if they appeared from Jan 1-Dec 31, 2007, so we were definitely out of that range!
Meanwhile … by R.C. Harvey was, indeed, published by Fantagraphics. So will Harvey be nominated for a Harvey now? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
I’ll end with three points:
– Meanwhile … Comics is a great blog and you should check it out. And I’m not just saying that because I feel shitty about my inquiry leading to their nomination being withdrawn. Seriously, go check it out.
– While there was obviously no malicious intent by the Harvey Awards folks here and it sounds like it was a pretty easy error to make, I think the statement that Meanwhile … was “listed on a chunk of ballots from the same company” really underscores the need for a better nomination process. One that doesn’t fall prey to comic companies who want to stuff the ballot box.
– In his email to me, Jason also suggested that maybe the Harveys could expand their categories: “And perhaps they should invent a category for blogs or commentary sites. As far as I know, the categories haven’t been updated since their inception in 1988. The times they are a changin’…”
Oni Press has partnered with online entertainment producer 60Frames to create print and online comics.
Variety reports the first titles will include Men With Guns: Assassin, by Tom Fontana (Oz, Homicide: Life on the Street) and Ark, developed by Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah (Freaks and Geeks). The former is a gritty drama that Fontana originally planned as a TV series, and the latter a sci-fi mystery created by Robbie Thompson.
Both comics will launch simultaneously next year online and in print.
The deal also calls for 60Frames to create web series based on several of Oni’s titles.
I think these screenshots have already popped up in various places around the web, but in any case, Midway sent over several screenshots from the upcoming game Mortal Kombat vs. the DC Universe … which has left a lot of fans scratching their heads or underwhelmed, as Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon noted in the Q&A with GameSpot I linked to earlier.
The images include four arenas and four “battle shots.” That’s Metropolis up top, with Hell, the Batcave and Gotham after the jump, followed by various characters beating the crap out of each other.
Boon and Jimmy Palmiotti, who is writing the story part of the game, will appear on a panel in San Diego to answer questions about the game.
First off, I’d like to say something about the recent grumbling from your LCSs and comic buyers alike about this week’s deluge of Marvel books. The House of Ideas is getting all they can out of the last week of June and for that, I’m sorry. You see, it looks like Joe Quesada found out today was my birthday and decided to release all my favorite books as a present. Sure, it’s a really expensive present that I have to pay for, sure, but still. Thor: Ages of Thunder – Reign of Blood comes out today and any book that has an army of skeletons summoned by a jilted goddess that Thor has to defeat with the EVILEST roll call of draft animals since Santa went crazy- well, I say too much. In any case, sorry for the mass of comics and next year I promise to have my birthday on a day that won’t mess with the shipping schedule.
Speaking of birthdays, the final issue of Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction’s Immortal Iron Fist hits shelves today, bringing us a very apropo tale of the end of Danny Rand’s momentous 33rd year. Yep, try and deny it all he wants, but the Immortal Iron Fist turns 33 this issue as the writers and artist team that took a guy in some yellow slippers into one of the hottest and consistantly awesome books Marvel has the joy of putting out month after month. It’s a big issue in a lot of ways, so let us pay a some homage to the little title that could, the character who’s grown within his own legacy and the co-writer that done about the same thing at the House of Ideas.
This summer I ♥ Comics returns to Blog@Newsarama. Each Wednesday comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.
This week our guest contributor is Thom Zahler, creator of the comic Love & Capes. Issue #8 of the fun romance/ super hero series comes out this October, and a trade collecting issues #1-6 is due from IDW in November.
by Thom Zahler
I love comics toys.
I think it’s natural for people who create comics, or people who want to, to be drawn to the comics toys. When you’re a kid, they’re not just toys, they’re the things that you use to tell your own stories when the comics end.
There’s also something just so enrealing, to completely make up a word, about toys. Superman and Batman certainly exist in my mind and in my books, but they exist as a three dimensional form that you can touch and hold, they become even more real.
My personal love of toys is strengthened by living through one of the Dark Ages of Comics Toys. I put it around 1975-1985. Now I’m sure those older than me will tell me they had it harder. Maybe they did. But since it’s my love of toys I’m talking about, it’s my Dark Age.
Just when you thought we’d seen the last of the posters for Batman: The Dark Knight, Comic Book Movie reveals a new one spotlighting The Joker.
The Dark Knight opens on July 18.
The kind folks at Fantagraphics sent me their Winter 2008 book catalog and, kind soul that I am, I thought I’d take the liberty of sharing its contents with all of you dear Blog@ readers. Here’s a quick, tentative run-down of the company’s upcoming publishing plans, starting with … (more…)
Wizard World’s biggest show rolls into the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois tomorrow with a host of comic pros, a few media guests and some fun events planned over the show’s four days.
Guests include Brian Michael Bendis, Warren Ellis, Alex Ross, Todd McFarlane, Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka, Erik Larsen, Marc Silvestri, Rob Liefeld, David Finch, Gail Simone, Bruce Timm, Whilce Portacio, Alex Maleev, Jessica Abel, Brian Azzarello, Tony Daniel, C.B. Cebulski, Peter David, Olivier Coipel, Sean McKeever, Matt Madden, Humberto Ramos, Brian Reed, author Max Brooks, wrestler Mick Foley, actress Missy Peregrym and many more.
Some of the programming highlights (which start Friday; Thursday is “premiere night”):
– The direct-to-DVD animated movie Batman Gotham Knight will debut at the show, followed by a panel with many of the creators who worked on it.
– The Hero Initiative will host “The Green Room,” featuring original Hulk #1 covers by 100 different artists.
– There’s an American Gladiators Q&A panel at 2 p.m. Friday in the Steve Gerber room. If you don’t see anything wrong with that sentence, I probably can’t help you.
– Johns vs. Bendis takes place at 5 p.m. Friday, sponsored by A&E/The History Channel. Everyone who attends gets a free Last Stand of the 300 DVD. I’m not sure what the connection is between the two, unless they’re supposed to represent the two sides of the conflict. I’ll let you decide who’s who …
– According to their Twitter feed, Devil’s Due will be announcing something, probably at their 3 p.m. panel on Saturday.
– The weekend’s most “WTF?”-inducing panel (and the competition was pretty tough) … how to start your own wiki, on Saturday. A close second is the Ogeno.com panel: “Ever wondered what Entertainment Networking would be like? Have you ever thought about what it would be like to have all your bookmarked sites in one place? If you’ve ever thought about this, your dreams are about to come true!” Egad, it’s like they’ve been reading my mind!
– Friday night Warren Ellis will host a panel in a room with two bars.
More info on the show can be found on Wizard’s site.
EW.com has the first look at the alternate cover for Marvel Apes #2, and the monkey variants for six of Marvel’s August and September comics: Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane #2, Punisher: War Journal #23, Daredevil #110, Incredible Hercules #121, Wolverine: First Class #6 and Cable #6.
