That’s just marvelous, man: Among the “big” “news” of this year’s San Diego Comic Con International, at least as far as Big Two super-comics are concerned, dealt with Marvel Comics and Marvelman. I assume you’ve already heard the news, right? It seems like a really big deal, at least until you actually read the announcement, which basically just says Marvel has some of the rights to Marvelman, they’ll pursue reprints and new stories at some point in the future and they’re “talking to” creators Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham (Which presumably means they’re trying to secure the rights to reprint the only stories anyone really cares about, but aren’t there yet). So add that all together, and it basically amounts to “Big announcement! A big announcement could come in the future!” In the meantime, they’re selling a Joe Quesada poster and t-shirt of the Miracleman logo. Our own David Pepose spent some time this weekend walking us through the convoluted history of one of the most legally disputed characters in comics, and Steve Bissette has an excellent post about that convoluted history here. Also offering salient (and cynical) commentary are Alan David Doane (Headline: “Marvelman: What’s the Worst That Could Happen? Wait, It Just Did”) and Christopher Bird (“I’m sure that twenty years of lawsuits will all go away now”).
“I would like to know more about this sort of thing. But, instead, the two major comics companies seem devoted to onanism”: The Onion AV Club’s Todd VanDerWerff goes off on an interesting tangent about how damn impenetrable Big Two super-comics are after attempting to understand what he saw at a DC panel at San Diego last week. Any article that includes the words “comics” and “onanism” in the same sentence is a good one in my book. Also at the AV Club is a nice “Gateway to Geekery” piece about Hernandez Brothers’ Love and Rockets comics; I particularly appreciated it as I had previously wrestled with how to approach the expansive universe of their comics, which had grown quite large by the time I started reading comics.
Cartoonist cat fight: In a previous edition of Linkarama, I had linked to a report of the rivalry between Becky Cloonan and Amy Reeder Hadley exploding into violence at MOCCA. According to The Beat, the two had it out again at last week’s Comic Con International, and, as they say in the funnybooks, Hadley got knocked the @#$% out!
Stay-at-home Diego Comic Con: The Fantagraphics employees who didn’t go to the big show this year had their own Fantacon 2009, while blogger/stuffed animal Bully The Little Stuffed Bull staged Bully-Con 2009. In other Bully-related news, check out this post about that which Daredevil seems to spend much of his time fighting (Hint: It ain’t ninjas or obese bald men who wear white before, during and after Memorial Day).
I guess that’s why Spider-Man just wears a full-face mask: Canadian pop star Skye Sweetnam demonstrates her make-up strategies for a couple different superhero looks. It looks like an awful lot of work, and a good argument for just wearing a mask
“Obama may be battling this recession one page at time, by increasing comic sales and giving those smaller comic companies a fighting chance”: So says the New York Daily News in a sad little article rounding up all of the terrible-looking comic books Barack Obama is appearing in and on this summer. The headline for the piece, naturally enough, begins with the word “POW!”
Speaking of the New York Daily News, I somehow missed this incredible headline a few weeks back: “Holy throwback to old-style newspaper strips, Batman! DC Comics unveils weekly ‘Wednesday Comics‘”
In the off chance you haven’t seen this yet: Here’s Abhay Khosla’s Abhay Khosla’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Read it and weep…with laughter. (Via Everyone and Their Mothers)
July 29th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Actually, if Marvel is actually talking to Alan Moore, as opposed to “calling him and having him immediately hang up” that is kind of interesting.
July 30th, 2009 at 10:01 am
For a bit more on the Love and Rockets, Fantagraphics has a nice little page on how to read the series:
http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=76&Itemid=137
July 31st, 2009 at 9:02 am
So… Is this Cloonan/Hadley thing for real?? I don’t know the story, so forgive my ignorance, but honestly? One of them honestly punched the other one out? And Cloonan didn’t get arrested for that? All blog posts made a joke out of it, so maybe that’s what it is. I will say this: that picture looks like a great cover for a comic.
July 31st, 2009 at 9:06 am
Haha. No, no, it’s not for real. Just a fun little thing they’ve been doing the last couple months, no worries.
July 31st, 2009 at 9:13 am
Thanks Lucas… I thought it had to be a put-on… Again, someone did a nice job setting up that shot.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:23 am
This Marvelman announcement reminds me of when they announced they had Stephen King. Everyone thought King might be writing comics, but it ended up he was just licensing his stuff to Marvel.
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:53 pm
ote the subtle differences:
“talking to Alan Moore” – We are talking to him, but he is not replying.
“talking with Alan Moore” – He is actually answering.
“In negotiations with Alan Moore” – We are talking to Alan Moore’s lwyer
“We think Alan Moore has already said what he wanted to say with the chracter” – Alan Moore told us to do something anatomically impossible and hung up.
Personally, I think Alan HAS finished his piece with Marvelman, and all that’s needed from him is permission to reprint, which apparently he may have already given unofficially, according to an interview at Forbidden Planet. If there’s anyone who’s already worked on it that would allay fears, it’s Gaiman.
Paul Cornell could do some great stories, and he seems to have a monthly hole in his schedule now. I can’t think of anyone else Marvel’s currently on friendly terms with that could do Marvelman stories I’d want to read. But I’m perfectly willing to give them the chance to try.