What comics publishers talk about when they talk about selling out: I imagine most of you have heard some version of this before, but Jason Wood does a nice job of explaining what exactly it means when a publisher announces that a comic book has sold out in this piece for iFanboy. I suppose it varies from publisher to publisher, but personally when I hear one of the bigger publisher’s announce a comic book selling out, it usually just confuses me, since comics are ordered far in advance and are unreturnable, making direct market publishing awfully close to printing-to-order. So sometimes when I read some announcements of sell-outs, I can’t help but translate them into “We messed up pretty badly” in my head. Anyway, the info Wood presents is always worth keeping in mind when parsing publisher PR.
Nice @#$%ing cover: Fantagraphics’ Flog blog shares word that Paul Hornschemeier is providing the cover for Dan Sinker’s The F***ing Epic Twitter Quest of @MayorEmanuel, a fake twitter account attributed to the notoriously foul-mouthed Obama chief-of-staff turned Chicago mayor that rapidly evolved into a fantasy novel of sorts. From what I’ve read of it, the book should be really funny, and that’s a damn fine cover image.
If so, it’s probably Circe’s doing: “Is ‘Wonder Woman’ Cursed?”
Superhero comics won’t truly be mainstream until newspapers care enough to Google the correct spelling of “Spider-Man”: That personal pet peeve aside, this Ottawa Citizen feature on Dale Eaglesham, premised on his upcoming Alpha Flight comic, is a nice spotlight of a deserving talent.
“Life After ‘Walking Dead’”: This Fear.net article, sub-titled “Five Horror Graphic Novels You Need to Read,” has a very broad definition of horror, and I’m not sure those five works would necessarily appeal to someone who liked Walking Dead (It’s not like it has much in common with Jill Thompson’s Scary Godmother comics, for example), but no one can ever go wrong with Jill Thompson, Rick Geary, Richard Sala, Thomas Ott and Lorenzo Mattotti.
“After all, if you’re going to ogle a drawing, it would be nice if it appeared to be human”: Good point, Matthew J. Brady.
IDW’s TMNT creative team is…: Comics Alliance put the word “exclusive” in brackets after their “IDW Announces ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Creative Team” headline, so I’ll link to their peice. That’s news I’ve been waiting to hear announced for quite some time now, and I’ll admit that it was pretty shocking news. There are three names attached, two of them belong to people whom I had never heard of, and the third of which is literally the last person I ever would have expected to hear as being attached to this project. Well, literally the last comics person—my grandfather is probbly the last person in general I would have expected to hear is attached to this project.
May 20th, 2011 at 5:49 am
My reaction to sell outs at the publisher level usually just have me thinking, “Well, I guess I won’t pick that book up. Guess that’s just one less series to worry about.”
I realize that this isn’t an exact science and that publishers have to be smart about how much they over print, but for a while there Image was selling out of every buzz book they had. I was interested in a couple, but when I went to my LCS, they were already gone in the same week they came out.
Again, that just saves me money. By the time a second print comes out, I’ll have lost interest. Maybe if a trade comes out. I’d love to go fully digital, but that’s still an unreliable mess. I’ll wait until they’ve sorted things out better.
May 20th, 2011 at 4:33 pm
From the Alpha Flight article:
“The superheroes are called into action to battle a fascist government takeover.”
So they’re going to beat the crap out of Stephen Harper?
Awesome!