David Brothers has an astonishing post about the source of Marvel bootleg scans that is a must-read, as he and David Uzumeri put the evidence together and come up with a pretty convincing case for the source being Marvel itself:

Taken all together: There are covers that differ from any legit cover. Pages that are pitch-perfect. DPI that matches across the board. Recap pages that occasionally vary in size, just like they do in official Marvel electronic review copies. Every Marvel comic is available early and all at once on the scan site du jour. DC comics appear in a trickle after 2pm EST. By 7pm EST on Wednesday, every big two comic is available for download, but well before that, Marvel’s entire line-up for the week is ready to go.

It’s pretty clear from this evidence that there’s a leak somewhere along the supply chain. Someone’s getting access to a PDF, or something, and dumping it to JPG before releasing it to the net. Converting a PDF to a series of JPGs is simple in Photoshop, and once you set up a good action to save the images, this is something that takes no more than five minutes to do, RAM and size of PDF depending.

There are multiple visual “smoking gun”s as part of the post for those who need more convincing, as well as more evidence for Brothers’ conclusion. It’s a wonderful piece of work , and a warning to both Marvel and the bootleggers that someone out there is paying attention.

Update: The post has been updated with Uzumeri’s realization that the leak is a security leak, and not a person; he’s tweeted that “it was just a regular IT security issue and the hole’s plugged.” Seriously, Marvel, you owe these two something for their detecting prowess here.

When is the right time for a full-scale DCU crossover?

Reading Bob Harras write about the “world-building” of DC’s New 52 via small-scale crossovers got me thinking about the way that DC is approaching linewide continuity since the New 52 reboot last September; we started slowly, with occasional mentions of things happening in other books, and then moved to guest appearances around the third issues, and it looks like we’ll be getting mini-events by the ninth issues. As a reader, I’m enjoying this approach; it simultaneously makes the line seem more coherent and also more filled with possibility and potential, because of the different nature of the events (The DCU is somewhere with Owls, the Rot and an alien invasion? Happening at the same time?!?), but it does make me wonder when we’re going to see the first line-wide storyline.

After all, it has to happen sometime, right? But… maybe it doesn’t, or at least, not anytime soon. Consider Marvel’s crossover approach: Avengers vs. X-Men may be getting all manner of hype right now, and it may end up changing the Marvel Universe forever afterwards, but in terms of a publishing plan, it’s actually much smaller than last year’s Fear Itself, and arguably the most successful (critically, at least) crossover at Marvel last year was the smaller-scale Spider Island. Not that “family” crossovers are anything new over there, of course; look at Shadowland, Second Coming, or Messiah Complex, for example. I wonder if the smaller footprint of AvX is purely a reaction to financial realities in the marketplace, or whether there’s also a need to move away from line-wide events judging by reader feedback…?

Here’s an entirely random question: What’s with the timing of Marvel’s new Avengers launches, in regards to the movie? Common wisdom – which, as we all know, may be a tautologous phrase – would suggest that you’d release a new #1 to coincide with the movie’s release (It’s what happened with Invincible Iron Man, The Mighty Thor and Captain America, I seem to remember…?), but when Marvel’s The Avengers hits theaters in May, Avengers Vs. X-Men will already be on #2 (Its third issue, remember; there’s #0 next month) and Avengers Assemble will similarly be at #2. Considering the risk of both launches selling out, that either means that Marvel will have an aggressive overprint/reprint policy in place for both titles – as they undoubtedly will – or whatever new audience might find itself in a store as a result of the movie won’t be able to find the two big entry points into the Marvel Comics Universe that are, in theory, aimed directly at them.

But thinking more about this, I wonder if the March and April (ish) launches of Assemble and AvX are actually timed to take advantage of the anticipation and advertising for the movie, rather than the movie itself; as awareness for MtA grows, so will – in theory – demand for the new books. Pushing AvX before the movie is actually released cuts down on the possibility of backlash based either on the amount of hype facing moviegoers or if the movie somehow, inexplicably, opens below box office expectations or turns out to disappoint fans (Not that I think either will happen, I should add). Maybe April is going to be as good as it gets for Avengers, in terms of excitement and awareness, and Marvel is being smarter than the average bear in placing AvX there. If nothing else, it’s better than the delayed Green Lantern prequels from DC last year, which saw the final release months after the movie had come, disappointed audiences, and disappeared from the big screen.

The first page of any comic is an important one; whether you go for the slow build or the big moment, your first page has to be something that the reader will see and think “What? I have to see more!” for whatever reason. With that in mind, I humbly present my choice for the greatest first page in comics ever:

Yeah, I know; everyone loves Kirby, right…? But there is so much to love about the opening of OMAC #1, whether it’s the bizarro body horror of the image of Lila the Build-A-Friend, the creepiness of her dialogue (made all the more wonderful by the “Lila… LILA!” from an off-panel OMAC, although you don’t know who he is, just yet) or the melodramatic splendor of Kirby’s narration. It’s eye-catching, pleasingly ugly, and the kind of thing that dares you to read on. Comics awesome? It’s this.

Somehow I missed the most important part of the announcement of Diamond Digital, the digital comic arm of Diamond Distributors (in partnership with iVerse) that’ll launch in July: That day-and-date releases will be available for $1.99. This feels like one of the missing steps that will allow everyone to gauge the health and potential of the digital market, although I wonder how much it’ll be undercut by the publishers who aren’t taking part in the program (Pretty much the bigger names in the direct market, with the exception of IDW who are participating: Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image, Boom Studios and Dynamite Entertainment, most of whom have exclusive digital deals with ComiXology). There’s actually a wealth of information about the DD initiative in the comments section of this post at the Beat, where iVerse’s Michael Murphey shows up repeatedly to answer questions about the program, including issues of pricing, format and why DD is better for retailers than other digital formats. Go read.

Tom Brevoort responds to complaints about Hawkeye’s recent costume change in Avengers:

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I switched Hawkeye’s costume (to one that he was already going to be wearing in AGE OF ULTRON) because it would create some consistency with the way he was going to be depicted in the film. I don’t really see anything wrong with that. By my count, Hawkeye has had at least half-a-dozen costumes over the years (remember the one with the skirt, headband and shirt-open-to-the-navel?) so this is merely another one. And it makes sense, when more people are going to be aware of that character than at any other time in his history to make it easy for those potential readers to draw a connection. This is hardly the first time such a thing has happened, nor will it be the last. So long as Hawkeye is Hawkeye, talks like Hawkeye, acts like Hawkeye, I don’t see where the problem is.

I have to admit, I’ve been somewhat taken aback by the upset over the costume change – or, maybe, I should say, by the idea that changing the character’s costume somehow changes the character; I’ve seen countless message board posts complain that Marvel has “stopped Hawkeye being Hawkeye,” which just seems somewhat insane, especially considering the numerous costumes that the character has had in the past as Brevoort points out. It seems even more of an overreaction when you consider that Hawkeye wasn’t Hawkeye until recently; he was Ronin, in a completely different costume, with a different name, divorced from his bow and arrow gimmick and in so many respects less “Hawkeye” than he is now. Where was the outrage then?

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not the biggest fan of the new look, but if there’s one thing that history has taught us, it’s that the “classic” Hawkeye outfit will be back sooner or later, movie or no movie. If people really need to be upset about Marvel changing characters in order to match their movie versions, then that whole rumored “new Nick Fury” thing coming out of Battle Scars is probably more worthy of attention…

Fast Company’s Co-Create blog has a great story on Before Watchmen, including input from Alan Moore that goes beyond the cartoonish curmudgeon that he seems to be in danger of becoming in a lot of reports:

I thought about it for a while–I could perhaps sue, although I suspect DC would be very comfortable with that. They have a whole battery of lawyers who could continue to fight this case for decades. And it’s not like I’m after money. It’s always been about the dignity and integrity of the work. I just want them not to do something. There’s no point in wasting resources for decades, when effectively, if there’s a legal case, I’d be prohibited from speaking about it, which DC is more worried about.

Moore also thanks those protesting the announcement of the project, and bemoans the franchise-centric nature of comics these days… a point that Jim Lee’s response underscores, as he talks about “[o]ne of the key characteristics of the comic book medium [being] that it is not brought to life by just one voice… These universes are developed and evolved by multiple creative voices, over multiple generations.” The entire medium, Jim? Really?

This one doesn’t need an explanation, does it? I don’t think this one needs an explanation.

Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series. If any comic of recent years earns a place in whatever official canon there may be of downright classic comics, it’s got to be this series, right? A deserved phenomenon, Scott Pilgrim was that rare comic that genuinely just kept getting better and better, with O’Malley’s skill and talent growing with each new release, and he started in a pretty good place (Anyone who liked SP and hasn’t read Lost At Sea, his first book with Oni, you’re really missing out). Just downright comic book awesome? Yeah, Scott Pilgrim definitely fits the bill.

So those definitely look like Skrulls in that Avengers movie toy tie-in… but Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has said that the movie will definitely not feature Skrulls. What’s going on? Well, the answer may revolve around legalities and, fittingly for shape-changing aliens who’re known for invading things secretly, disguises. The Skrulls, you see, originally appeared in a Fantastic Four story, which legally means that their movie rights are held by Fox as part of its Fantastic Four license – at least until such rights revert back to Marvel, whenever that will be – so they can’t appear in Avengers… kinda sorta.

After all, Marvel has another Skrull race not called Skrulls, thanks to The Ultimates. Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch introduced the Chitauri, a race of shape-changing aliens who were known on some worlds as “Skrull” in the first volume of their run, remember? And these guys are definitely not part of any Fantastic Four licensing deal… Considering the various cues Marvel’s movie universe has taken from the Ultimate line to date, it’s not too much of a stretch to guess that we’ll see a Chitauri invasion force in the movie, and if they happen to resemble the Skrulls quite a bit…? Well, come on: Alien shapechangers, am I right? Who knows what crazy ears they like to grow for fun.

I know it’s a question that’s been on your mind a lot lately, but now you can rest easy – Tintin is not racist, according to a Belgian court:

Documents from the court of first instance in Brussels show that it did not believe the 1946 edition of Tintin in the Congo was intended to incite racial hatred, a criteria when deciding if something breaks Belgium’s racism laws. The decision was issued late on Friday…The Belgian court said the book was created at a time when colonial ideas were prevalent, and there was no evidence that Hergé, who died in 1983, intended to incite racism. “It is clear that neither the story, nor the fact that it has been put on sale, has a goal to … create an intimidating, hostile, degrading or humiliating environment,” the court said in its judgment.

Yes, there’s nothing degrading or humiliating about this at all:

In light of the ruling in the Gary Friedrich/Marvel lawsuit, Steve Bissette has shared some advice from Jean-Marc Lofficier for artists:

This is the first time Marvel is using convention sales of copyrighted Marvel characters as a “weapon”. They are of course perfectly entitled to do so, legally speaking. But it does mean that, from now on, all of you here who draw sketches of Marvel characters for money at conventions or sell sketchbooks containing pictures of Marvel characters are on notice that you might be sued (usually for triple the amount you made) should Marvel decide to go after you.

My legal advice to you guys is simple: STOP and destroy all sketchbooks for sale with copyrighted materials in it. I’m serious. You’ve just been put on notice by this case… Based on the GHOST RIDER case, it is, in my opinion, only a matter of time until Disney, now aware of the issue, sends one of their young attorneys with a stash of blank C&D letters at conventions and start handing them out to everyone selling Marvel sketches without authorization.

Receiving that letter will oblige you to hire a lawyer and even if Disney lets you off the hook (which they probably will), you might be out of a couple of grands by the time the process is over — or you run the risk of being stuck with a $15K bill if you fight them.

Again, I emphasize: this is sound business practice for Disney; NOT doing it entails risks far greater than doing it. They have gone after children’s nurseries before which had Mickey painted on their walls for the same exact legal reason. And that was far more time consuming and bad PR-wise that going after some comic book guys at artist’s alleys.

This kind of thing has been rumored almost since Disney bought Marvel three years ago; that the company, known for being so protective of its property, would eventually go after artists doing commissions and the like. The Friedrich ruling certainly feels like a move in that direction, although it’s possibly worth bearing in mind that Friedrich did launch legal action first, but it’ll be interesting to see how (if at all) Marvel deals with the fallout of this decision and the nervousness and bad PR its brought with it.

Fittingly – if, honestly, entirely coincidentally – for Valentine’s Day, today’s piece of comics awesome isn’t an idea or a creator or a storyline, but a character – One of the three characters in what may be comics’ most long-lived love triangle, now that I come to think of it.

Veronica Lodge, ladies and gentlemen. The smart choice may be Betty Cooper, as evidenced by the above panel that shows that Veronica literally thinks in “Nasty Schemes”, but what is love if not something that refuses to be beaten down by “smart choices” at times? She’s rich, she’s occasionally heartless and she won’t let anyone stand in her way unless the status quo or plot demands it, and because of that, she’s absolutely spectacular; somewhere in the “Comics That Never Were But Should Be”verse, there’s a “Lois Lane Vs. Veronica Lodge” miniseries that I would love to read. One day, perhaps… one day…

Brian Hibbs has all manner of interesting information from talking to DC executives at the recent ComicsPro meeting:

The redemption rate on the combo pack for the digital codes in JUSTICE LEAGUE? It was just 20% on issue #1, and it has dropped to just 10% (on #4 or #5, I don’t think was 100% clear) — it appears that DM consumers bought those AS COLLECTIBLE VARIANT COVERS, rather than because they wanted a digital copy… The single best sales day for day-and-date DC digital comics has been and continues to be the first Wednesday of release; when the price drops by a dollar there’s a teeny spike in velocity  — evidently it is the 10th best sales day (Is that “on average” or for a specific title? I don’t think that was clarified) — but not any kind of a huge surge; this would seem to indicate that digital buyers are just fine paying the full print price, so that they can be “part of the conversation” at initial release.

There’s more in the post, including DC’s John Rood apparently explaining DC’s digital strategy as being “about aiding physical (format) growth, NOT managing physical decline,” which is more than a little surprising, especially as it’s at odds with almost all other media experiences with the digital market. We keep hearing that digital is an additive market for comics, not one that’s expected to replace print sales, and I can’t help but wonder if that speaks to an overall greater health for the print comic market than many had thought, or an overall greater irrelevance for comics than anyone thought that efforts to discover a digital market haven’t caught on the way publishers would’ve hoped…?

Cartoon Network’s DC Nation is less than a month away, with the announcement that the one hour programming block will launch March 3 with a combination of Green Lantern: The Animated Series and Young Justice, as well as the teased additional features promoting the comics, video games and other merchandise featuring the DCU characters. The launch comes almost a full year after the announcement of the programming block, and a month before Disney’s competing Marvel Universe programming block, announced last month. With Saturdays and Sundays soon to feature superhero-specific programing, all we need now is for Boomerang to schedule re-runs of Youngblood and Spawn for an Image Comics block on Fridays and the weekend is all set…

If you have the Monday blues – and, let’s face it, it’s very likely that you have, considering that it’s the start of another work week and everything – then why not combat it with some much-recognized comics awesome? Like this, for example:

The Legion of Super-Heroes is one of those things that you either completely buy into or think is confusingly lame, it seems; I’m firmly in the former camp, thinking that the series is one of comics’ greatest high concepts (“It’s teenagers! In the future! With superpowers!”) and loving the optimism and soap opera at the series’ core just as much as the spectrum of colorful costumes and superpowers that go from the classic and original to the ridiculous and amusing and back again. The Legion feels like the most superhero of all superhero comics to me, taking the basic ideas to the extreme and seeing what the result is when everything is turned up to 11. There’s little in superhero comics that is as awesome to me as the Legion of Super-Heroes.

First, I want to clarify that we do not do “crossover” events. This is [an] important distinction. I was here in the ’90s when “crossover” events were the norm, which is when you make a reader buy four or more different titles in a specific order to get the whole story. “Galactic Storm” is the example that jumps out from my memory banks.

We do line-wide editorial events. These events usually involve a core book like “Civil War,” “Secret Invasion,” “Siege,” etc. that could be read on their own for the complete story. Other books in the line will then use that event to develop “tie-in” stories which could be “in line,” a new miniseries or one-shot. Sorry to go off on a tangent but this is a very important distinction because we are not requiring the fans to buy into three or four other ongoing series to get the main story.

That’s Marvel publisher Dan Buckley, correcting a reference in a CBR interview to “crossover events” while apparently forgetting things like 2007′s Messiah Complex and 2010′s Second Coming, both of which required fans to buy into multiple ongoing series to get the main story, as well as the upcoming “Omega Effect” storyline, which requires fans to buy three ongoing series to get the complete story. But what’s in a term? You say “potato,” I say “starchy tuberous editorial event,” after all.

(More seriously, I look forward to the “very aggressive marketing campaign” for AvX; Buckley describes it as “the biggest marketing campaign in Marvel Comics history and something [that] will, without a doubt, bring new readers to stores,” suggesting that Marvel has learned from the successes DC had with its New 52 mainstream promotion. Here’s hoping Marvel has the same success with its efforts.)

Today’s clearly the day for number-crunching; not only is Brian Hibbs looking at how the bookstore market is performing, but DC has released information from their customer survey performed post-New 52 relaunch, which seemingly confirms that their comics are being sold to an aging, male audience: 93% of those surveyed were male, with only 2% younger than 18 (Interestingly and weirdly, digital customers skewed older than print customers, which seems completely the opposite of what you’d expect).

Also unexpected: Digital downloads from DC’s “combo pack” codes was described by DC’s John Rood as “astonishingly low” – this despite the fact that DC have recently added more titles to be offered at the “combo pack” price-point and format and Marvel’s David Gabriel talking about a “high conversion rate” for his publisher’s digital download offers. It’s not all bad news for DC, though; the in-store portion of the surveys apparently found more than 25% of respondents were lapsed readers who’d returned to the fold because of the New 52 promotion, and with more than 50% of those completing the survey having an income below $60,000 annually, the publisher touted the success of its $2.99 price-point.

Something worth remembering – a lot of people (Myself included) tried to complete the survey online but were told that they did “not qualify for this particular survey” (Look at the comments to this post for those getting that message), making me wonder just how skewed all of this data may actually be.

(Also, DC? If 93% of your audience really is male? It’s time to start marketing your books to women a lot better.)

Today’s absolute must-read is Brian Hibbs’ breakdown of the Bookscan (ie, mainstream bookstore) numbers for last year, which is just filled with important, and at times somewhat distressing, information about how comics are doing outside of the Direct Market. The short version is “badly”; Hibbs reports an 11.2% drop in books sold and 6.2% drop in dollars from 2010, although he thinks there may be a silver lining to those numbers (“What’s actually a little optimistic, in my mind, is that the drops that the 2011 market shows is a smaller percentage drop than it was in 2010,” he explains. “That suggests to me, possibly, that if Border’s hadn’t had its troubles, or if the economic climate had been better, then we could have seen a flat or improved year in the bookstores”). The victor of the year is undoubtedly kids’ books, which take the top three best sellers, although The Walking Dead generated $8.7 million in sales through its various incarnations, making it the most successful individual franchise on the list.

Hibbs notes that, while it still makes up 52% of the market, manga continues to weaken as a market, European and American publishers are still finding more success with books with some kind of crossmedia tie-in than all-original standalone properties. That said, Marvel – a company that had the massively successful Thor, Captain America and X-Men First Class movies t0 help promote their offerings last year – seemed to choke in the mainstream marketplace, ranking a somewhat stunning eighth out of “western” publishers:

The best-selling book with “Thor” in the title (“Thor” having grossed $449m in world-wide box office, you understand) is actually the $125 Walt Simonson Omnibus (only 4020 copies, but that cover price makes it the #10 dollar book for the entire year with a gross retail of just over half-a-million dollars.

The best-selling “X-Men” titled book is “X-Men: Age of X” (3237) sold, though it’s is beaten by “Uncanny X-Force: Apocalypse Solution” (3807). Neither is even remotely akin to the film “X-Men: First Class.”

No “Captain America”-titled book makes the Top 750 — “Reborn” comes in at #837 with 2903 copies. Again, no apparent bounce from the film.

I think it is worth mentioning that Marvel flooded the market in advance of “Cap” and “Thor” with miniseries, where it was stated the goal was to have a wide backlist in place when the films came out. Not a single one of those books that were purportedly created with the film-goers in mind, made the Top 750. Marvel harmed its own brand in its core market by flooding out more material than the market could support, and it appears to have gained absolutely nothing from it on the back end.

Equally stunning: No Marvel book apparently sold more than 10,000 copies in the bookstore market. No wonder the publisher likes to stay away from the OGN format.

There is so much to find in this report. Go read.

In somewhat of a change of pace from previous installments, today’s option for comics awesome is, simply, one of the greatest autobiographical comics of all time.

Eddie Campbell’s Alec (These days available in Top Shelf’s omnibus Alec: The Years Have Pants) is one of the funniest, smartest and most honest comics that’s ever created, filled with a love of humanity and an off-kilter sensibility all of its own. As if that weren’t enough – and the prospect of thirty years of comics telling Campbell’s own life story for an even longer period doesn’t seem particularly exciting to you – then How To Be An Artist, one of the series collected within the omnibus has the added appeal of being one of the best histories of what happened to British (and, because of Alan Moore, American) comics in the 1980s that you could hope to find. Seriously, comics just don’t get any better than this.

Wondering what’s next from Jim McCann, writer of the Eisner-winning Return of the Dapper Men? Mind the Gap, his new Image Comics series with art from Rodin Esquejo and colorist Sonia Oback, is scheduled to debut in May, and McCann (a veteran of Marvel’s PR department) is already getting the promotional machine rolling, first by debuting one of two covers for the first issue on Thursday.

Read an interview with McCann on Mind the Gap here; full cover (by Esquejo and Oback) after the jump.

(more…)