To celebrate its one-year anniversary – and generate more proof of the wider appeal of superheroes than even superhero publishers are sometimes willing to embrace – the spectacular Girls Love Superheroes blog is having a birthday contest for new submissions:

I created the blog to show that wanting to be a superhero or loving superheroes or playing with superheroes is not just a “boy” thing. I just love getting the pictures from parents or other relatives as so many of them have wonderful stories. And how can anyone resist the pictures? And how can anyone not look at those pictures and not see that little girls are an audience waiting to be nurtured into paying consumers?I’m very proud of the blog and thrilled with the response that it got. I’m also very thankful for the web sites that have featured or promoted it including Oprah.com. But lately the pictures haven’t been coming in as much so its time to prime the pump! And with Free Comic Book Day coming up it would seem the perfect time to do it as many comic shops have kids activities or costume contests.

And to encourage the submission of said photos I am ponying up prizes! Every photo submitted from the now from the month of May will be submitted into a drawing for prizes. For every 20 pictures I get I’ll add a prize and then draw a winner in June.

Prizes include Lego Wonder Woman key chains, Mattel Infinite Heroes 3-packs and more. Submissions details can be found here. Go and submit! It’s a good blog and promoting important things.

Good news for fans of Mike Baron and Steve Rude: Nexus is back, and Dark Horse Presents has got him. Here’s Baron talking about the return, from CBR:

We are so stoked on these new stories — I wish I could tell you what we’re working on now. It’s major geekery. The first story deals with the sudden appearance of a sinister moon over Ylum. The second and third stories deal with an infestation. The story after that gets real crazy. Heads will explode. Figuratively! Maybe literally.

I’m glad to see the character back; I was worried that the seeming collapse of Rude’s self-publishing venture three years ago had accidentally buried Nexus and everything around him, especially when the relaunch of First Comics didn’t include an appearance by the character. Good to know that Dark Horse has stepped in, and nice to see another strong strip due for a DHP appearance, too.

How important to Warners is the legal decision against Marc Toberoff from earlier this week? As Jeff Trexler explains, very:

If the court in Pacific Pictures should decide that there was indeed a substantial conflict of interest, the consequences could go well beyond Toberoff’s removal as attorney for the Siegel and Shuster heirs. As we saw in when reviewing the appellate briefs, WB argues that Toberoff’s interference led the Siegel heirs to improperly reject a generous binding settlement. A finding against Toberoff on the conflict-of-interest issue would only reinforce WB’s effort to erase the impression that this is a dispute between a noble family and a greedy corporation, a reframing of the case that could exert a subtle but significant influence on the court’s decision on the legal issues.

Could a shift in opinion against the Siegel’s lawyers really cause enough of a change that the case will turn against them? Surely it couldn’t reflect so badly on the family that the case turns against them completely…

Over at design blog Print, Steven Brower expands on the awesomeness of Jack Kirby by concentrating on his work in collage throughout his career, and putting it in context with “fine art” of the same period:

Kirby’s collages have little in common with Cubism or Dadaism in execution, such as those by Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray or Kurt Schwitters, but the affect of Surrealism is in clear evidence. Following the staid 1950s (at least by popular perception) the 1960s saw a return to the dreamlike qualities of Surrealism both through mainstream culture through advertising and counter-culture imagery as well. Perhaps Kirby’s collages come closest to the work of courageous anti-Nazi artist John Heartfield, whose pointed political work were intended not only to be responded to viscerally but also told a story. Then again, there are Kirby collages in existence where the original motivation remains mysterious.

ICv2 has a three-part interview with Dark Horse Comics CEO Mike Richardson up (Parts one, two, three), looking back at 2011 (which he calls a “quiet” year for the publisher, with news of the layoffs midway through the year being “so overblown”) and forward to 2012, including this little tidbit:

I would say that we’re probably closer [to the publication of 300 sequel Xerses] than we were a year ago.  I talked to Frank (Miller) not long ago and he’s enthused and there are some of his other creator owned projects with us that he’s going to return to, hopefully, in the very near future.

Does this mean more Sin City…? We know that the next movie is (finally) a go, after all…

Quick! Digital comics: Attempt by an industry to stay contemporary with new technology and reach a new (and lapsed) readership or attempt to destroy the direct market, printing industry and everything you hold dear? Don’t ask retailer Jerry Ringi of Virginia’s Amazing Fantasy Comics if you’re hoping for the former outlook:

Look at the history since the 90′s and it’s so obvious that publishers want it all and they do not want the Direct Market to exist and make any money at all.  History inserts by Marvel telling our customers that comic shops are dark and dangerous to kids and also dirty and you have to watch out for that retailer.  With a subscription you get free issues from them but they berated us for giving pull customers at our shops a discount.  Charging us at every turn for promotional items to help sell their product.  They even make money from Free Comic Book Day.

This made me curious: Do publishers actually make money on FCBD product? I know that retailers have to pay for the comics, but I always thought that that was, essentially, sharing the cost of the promotion with publishers as opposed to actually turning the whole thing into a profit generator. Admittedly, the rest of Ringi’s rant leads me to disbelieve this particular notion, but still: Can anyone shine a light on this matter?

What is better than reading Avengers vs. X-Men (#2 out today, with added poetry)? How about appearing in an Avengers comic? Five readers who also happen to be Harley-Davidson fanatics will be getting the chance to do just that by creating their own super-hero personas and their perfect bikes, thanks to Avengers: Heroes Arise:

We’re excited to collaborate with Marvel again and to do it with such a great and historic property like the Avengers,” said Dino Bernacchi, Harley-Davidson Marketing Communication Director. “The Assemble Your Freedom contest gives anyone who believes in things like freedom and independence the chance to express their passion and spirit for Harley-Davidson and Avengers in a truly unique way. They’ll be able to ride into an Avengers mission and be immortalized in this special edition digital comic.”

Entirely coincidentally, The Comics Internet answers a question that’s been in the back of my head for a couple of weeks: The First Comics revival is still happening! You may remember that the revival of the independent comic publisher was initially announced at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, with the first books targeted for a November release, and then… nothing. But at C2E2, we were given an update:

With the lineup in place, [Co-Publisher Ken] Levin turned to the question of distribution. First Comics will not go through Diamond Comics Distributors. “We felt going through Diamond, we are going to get buried,” Levin explained. “This is a time when retailers really need publisher support, and they are not getting it for the most part. They face a lot of adversity economically that they didn’t really bargain for, and there are things publishers can do to try and help. One of the things we’re doing is we are selling to them directly, and the points that Diamond would have gotten, were we through Diamond, we are giving to retailers. Retailers will make more money on First Comics books than they will on anybody else’s books.”

Jeremy Cote (Dan Cote’s son) will be the retail coordinator for First Comics. “What I have said to people in the press who are sort of shocked that we are doing this is we are fully capable of screwing things up as much as Diamond is, we don’t need special training in that,” Levin said. “The difference is retailers will have somebody they can actually get on the phone, get on the e-mail, and get it corrected the next day. We won’t be perfect, but they won’t have better service than they will from Jeremy and his people.”

Readers will be able to use the First website – Due to launch in the next couple of weeks – to see the publisher’s existing and upcoming releases, and then order through retailers as with Diamond publishers. I’m unsure about the wisdom of this plan, to be honest; not only does it feel like it puts additional strain on retailers (If every other publisher is coming through one source, does adding a secondary source for another publisher not complicate ordering and budgeting? I could be wrong), but I feel that not appearing in Previews every month is going to make First’s marketing to readers all that more important and difficult. Is this just me being resistant to change, or do others also worry that First is making it easier for themselves to fall through the cracks this time around…?

One of the biggest announcements from this past weekend’s C2E2 convention in Chicago was Marvel’s new Hawkeye ongoing series, starring the increasingly ubiquitous Avenger and from the creative team of writer Matt Fraction and artist David Aja. Our interview with Fraction is here, and we also talked to Aja — and got some thoroughly unconventional (and undeniably creative) answers.

Newsarama: David, you very famously worked with Matt a few years back on Immortal Iron Fist — how has it been reuniting with him on Hawkeye?

David Aja: Thanks to quantum superstrings, Matt and I have been working together all those years on a parallel dimension, so I do not really have that reuniting feeling but a continuity one. Those superheroes comics are all about continuity. And reuniting. Life and death. But in ink. Know what I said? Great, because I do not have the slightest idea.

Nrama: Visually, what can you say about the tone of the series?

Aja: Well, to draw is an eternal search and learning, so we will see what I find. Lately I’m trying to go more iconic, more cartoony, but keeping that mundane way of doing stuff it seems I always have. I suppose I will keep on going with that progression. It’s my style realistic? I don’t think so. Mundane? Yup, could be. See? You do not need to make questions, I can do that job for you. Next one, “David, how can you be that extremely charming, talented, handsome and modest, dude?” Oh Albert, you think so, thank you, but naaaah, do not take care what people say, I’m a humble guy. Oh, look a magpie on my window. I love magpies, don’t you Albert? May I call you Albert?

The full cover to Hawkeye #3, released by USA Today, is after the jump.

(more…)

Those aliens in the Avengers movie? They’re not important, according to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige:

Truthfully, they are Loki’s army and what is most important about them is that they are Loki’s army… The notion of Skrulls and Kree and the amount of speculation — the great thing about the fans just want to know everything they don’t know. They wanted to fill in the blank, and that blank wasn’t particularly important of who the aliens were; we revealed Loki a long time ago, he was the main bad guy.

Well, until they’re important, of course:

There’s a reveal at the end — the notion that Loki has made an arrangement with somebody, that somebody has provided these extremely deadly and creepy and cool aliens to fight alongside him and then to reveal who that somebody was, that’s all Joss and that was sort of the big payoff.

Yes, those two quotes really do come right after one another in the interview, amusingly enough (“What’s really important about them is this – well, really, it’s this”). Also, does this mean that we now know what the mysterious new scene shot last week is, or is that a different new scene…?

While C2E2 may have been drawing most comic book eyeballs this weekend, the New York Times had a great piece about the behind-the-scenes drama at Archie Comics that has led to court battles over the control of the company:

What Mr. Goldwater refers to as “the boiling point” was reached in May 2011 when a female employee threatened to file a harassment complaint against Ms. Silberkleit with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Mr. Goldwater hired a lawyer and commissioned a human resources consultant to investigate the accusations of workplace abuses; Ms. Silberkleit was the only member of the company who declined to be interviewed. The report, released in June 2011, concluded her absence or removal was advisable, and in July, Mr. Goldwater began legal action against her. According to Mr. Goldwater, all two dozen employees volunteered to supply affidavits bemoaning Ms. Silberkleit’s conduct; Ms. Silberkleit termed that proof of a Machiavellian palace coup engineered by Mr. Goldwater.

After a series of court rulings against Ms. Silberkleit that included a $500 fine — for violating the temporary restraining order by twice showing up at the office in mid-December with a former football player in tow — and responsibility for $59,000 in legal expenses accrued by the company, last month the hostile parties agreed to take their problems to mediation. Ms. Silberkleit’s 50 percent share of the company is not in jeopardy, but her job may be.

Some of this has been public knowledge for some time, but the piece has a lot more information, and puts everything into a clear context, suggesting not only reasons for the conflict between Goldwater and Silberkleit, but also reasons for Archie’s relatively recent bid for the title of Most Progressive Mainstream Publisher, what with the Kevin Keller storylines, the upcoming “Occupy Riverdale” storyarc and the company’s wholehearted embrace of digital before anyone else. It’s an interesting, somewhat eye-opening read.

The news from this past weekend that Journey Into Mystery will be crossing over with The Mighty Thor for a story arc called “Everything Burns” got me wondering something: Is Journey Into Mystery the most crossed-over title we’ve seen from a publisher in awhile?

It’s definitely the best most crossed-over title we’ve seen; JiM is continually a great read, with writer Kieron Gillen bringing a specific (and deeply enjoyable) tone to the book despite the number of other stories it gets itself involved in. But “Everything Burns” will apparently run from #642-645 of the title, following on from “Exiled,” the book’s crossover with New Mutants in #637 and #638. Of course, the title launched with a number of Fear Itself tie-in issues from #622-630, meaning that in 24 issues of the title’s existence, only nine won’t have been labelled as some kind of crossover or tie-in to another series or event (I’m being kind and assuming that the “Shattered Heroes” banner that the book had for five of those issues is, essentially, sales-based and not story-centric).

Even in these event-centric times, that really does feel like a small number, doesn’t it? And yet, the realities of the business these days being what they are, that number of tie-ins and crossovers is possibly what’s managed to keep the book around all this time – Maybe I should be grateful that the book has been good despite the cross-continuity demands, and glad that it’s found itself in the center of all these storylines, because otherwise, it wouldn’t necessarily be around at all…

Hope you weren’t waiting for the paperback edition of the collected Legion Lost series by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and Oliver Coipel:

Please note that orders for the LEGION LOST TP (FEB120261) have been cancelled. This item will not be resolicited.

Unless I’ve missed some, this is the first paperback to be cancelled by DC in awhile; I thought that perhaps we were out of the danger zone for such things, but apparently not. I’m curious just how small the orders must’ve been for this, so we could work out a baseline for DC’s trade cut-off point…

It’s apparently all about the mainstream publicity these days; not only are Marvel promising media coverage for the upcoming wedding in Astonishing X-Men and “when universes collide” crossover in Spider-Men, but DC is now talking about the TV ads it’ll have to support Before Watchmen, New-52-style:

Given the fact that Watchmen has been a strong perennial seller in bookstores for years, and has a sterling literary reputation—it was the only graphic novel on Time Magazine’s list of the “Top 100 Novels”—it has been read by a huge number of people who don’t regularly read comics.  TV ads appear to be among the best possible ways of reaching those potential customers and informing them about the Before Watchmen books.

Call me cynical, but it strikes me that targeting the non-comic-reading audience and saying “There’s now more Watchmen!” isn’t something you should do for the original publication, but the subsequent collections – Isn’t that format the one more likely to appeal to an audience that doesn’t have experience paying $3.99 for one small chapter of the story…?

It’s artistic musical chairs at Marvel: Khoi Pham is moving from Daredevil to Scarlet Spider, where he’s replacing Ryan Stegman, who’s moving onto Fantastic Four, and Jamie McKelvie and Mike Norton are taking over Defenders from Terry Dodson, who’s off to parts unknown beyond July’s Avenging Spider-Man #9 (That’s better news than I was expecting about Defenders; given the drops between issues, I was expecting news of cancellation before a new art team announcement, to be honest).

What’s interesting about these announcements isn’t just how good a fit they all seem (Pham on Scarlet Spider in particular seems like a really good match), but that there’s a sense from the interviews supporting the announcements that these may be more permanent artistic changes than some we’ve seen at Marvel lately; I wonder if the recent “one arc and then off” era may be being replaced by some kind of more consistent artistic regime for awhile?

Okay, start your speculation engines one more time: Marvel has told retailers that, when Ultimate Captain America returns to the books this summer, he’ll make “a decision no superhero has ever done before… that can only be done in an Ultimate book.”

Genuinely, I’m stumped about what that could be. Even before the “can only be done in an Ultimate book,” I can’t even guess what kind of decision a superhero has never made before, considering all of the decisions that superheroes have made in their 75+ year history at some point. We’ve even had superheroes go rogue and try to destroy humanity in that time, after all… But then, I’m also not paying attention to the Ultimate books for the most part. Are there clues I’ve missed out on about this apparently momentous return? Can anything live up to that level of hyperbole?

The numbers don’t lie: More people are reading Image comics every single week, and those numbers are going to increase, whether they get them from your stores or from someplace else, because no offense to everyone who made the last 20 years so vital and creative, but right now, we’re blasting headlong into the future and creating some of the best comics in history.

See – in the past, when everyone claimed the sky was falling, it was because we were losing readers in droves – and worse, we were losing stores – because our numbers had been inflated by speculation.

But the reason the sky isn’t falling now – the reason we’re actually skyrocketing – is because there are readers – real readers, the kind of customers we all want – in abundance.

It’s our job – yours, mine, and the creators we publish – to capture their attention and give them the kind of experience they’ll come back for again and again.

That’s Image’s Eric Stephenson, from his keynote address at the C2E2 Retailer’s Summit yesterday (as posted in full at iFanboy). The “we” that’s skyrocketing is, presumably, Image Comics and not the industry as a whole, but it’s worth pointing out that according to figures released the direct market is actually growing annually. Are comics better off now that during the boom years of the 1990s, in terms of the business as well as the quality of the comics themselves…?

The spectacular Dustin Harbin considers the Eisner Awards:

The big big big problem with the Eisner Awards, probably bigger than any of the others I’ve listed here, is the Eisners have been around long enough to attain that quality of being too heavy to move anymore. Everyone complains about the Eisners, everyone disagrees with them, which is natural in any kind of qualitative, subjective award. But when you start talking about how to change them, the conversation inevitably turns to “well we all know that won’t happen” or “yeah but people will complain if there’s not an award for _____”. And that’s natural too probably. It’s the same with anything that tries to serve as large an audience as the Eisners do. Someone’s always going to be grumpy, me in this case.But are those reasons not to change something? Shouldn’t the preeminent industry award carry some true cachet? Some thrill other than “now I can put “Eisner-winning” in front of my name and hopefully sell more books”? Shouldn’t an award push an artform forward, define the leading edge of that form, rather than stooping to gladhand each balkanized sector each year?

What makes Harbin’s post so worthy of your attention – besides the cartoon about attending the Doug Wright Awards that opens it – is that he doesn’t just complain about the Eisners, but offers his solution, which includes drastically paring down the number of awards given out, the judging structure and even the name of the awards themselves. I’m not sure if I agree with all of his suggestions – or even all of his complaints about the Eisners as a ceremony/concept  – and wonder if, instead, this is the start of a parallel/replacement award altogether, but it’s a remarkably interesting post that should start a conversation or two about a comic institution we tend to take for granted a lot…

Last night the world premiere of Avengers — or as it’s officially called, Marvel’s The Avengers — took place in Hollywood. Several Marvel creators were in attendance, and based on Twitter, it doesn’t look like any of them were disappointed by the latest entry in the Marvel Studios canon. (more…)

…Aaaaaand here’s the bit where we all get that little bit more nervous about Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel movie, courtesy of Dylan Sprayberry, who plays the young Clark Kent in said movie:

When Zack [Snyder] and I were talking about it the first time, he was saying how Superman, they want to give it a more edgy feel like The Dark Knight but also make it more realistic and emotional so it’s not just the all-American superhero that saves everyone. He has dilemmas and love and struggles throughout the whole movie, especially when he’s a kid.

Firstly: “A more edgy feel like The Dark Knight“? It’s Superman. Secondly: “Make it more realistic and emotional”? Again, it’s Superman. If you’re concerned with making Superman “more realistic,” I really do start to worry that you don’t get the core appeal of “Alien sent to Earth from dying planet, turns into superhero and saves the day a lot.”