Remember when it was discovered bootlegged Marvel comics weren’t coming from the stores, but instead exploiting an IT hole in the printing chain? Looks like it might not have been Marvel that had that problem; Bleeding Cool is reporting that Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Nine #9 was bootlegged online yesterday… on the same day that #8 hit stores.

What’s particularly weird about this isn’t just that the IT security hole exists for multiple publishers, but that someone is trying to spread the idea that at least one physical copy of this issue was accidentally released a month early, in Germany of all places. Ignoring the question of “Why Germany,” I’m more curious about whether or not there even are physical copies of Buffy #9 in existence just yet, even in Dark Horse’s offices…

I don’t know why I find this quote, from Grant Morrison’s Flex Mentallo interview on CBR, so weirdly affecting:

I suddenly realized that Flex is one of the characters that I really wanted to own but I didn’t. And because he appeared in “Doom Patrol” first, which was a DC book, he kind of became a DC character even though every single character in the miniseries was basically created. It’s kind of like a creator-owned book but it isn’t.

He could show up anywhere. Geoff [Johns] could put him in the Justice League. I have this strange fear that he is going to appear somewhere someday… The character seems so attached to me, so probably no one would do it. Geoff had him in “Teen Titans” very briefly. He was in a poster on the wall at the Doom Patrol HQ. But maybe in a couple of years, everyone will realize they can use him — but that would be horrible.

In a year when the idea of “creator owned” work seems to be becoming one of the predominant conversations about comics online, reading such a fan of company-owned superhero franchise characters as Morrison – whose Supergods is practically a love letter to that idea, after all – say that it’d be “horrible” for one of his characters to become part of that group feels particularly powerful in a way that I wouldn’t have expected. Is it just me?

Reading this overview of recent interviews promoting Before Watchmen at ICv2, a thought occurred to me: Is this second wave of PR aimed specifically at the people who reacted to badly to the announcement of the line in the first place? Seeing Darwyn Cooke talk about how he had to be added “kicking and screaming” onto the books, or that he’d turned down Dan Didio when first asked until he found himself coming up with an idea that was worth the original story almost a year later feels like a far more humble, far more “We get it! This seems like a bad idea!” approach to PR than some of the first interviews and stories that were done when the project was officially announced, especially some of J. Michael Straczynski’s comments.

If this is a purposeful redirectioning of the PR, I’m curious to see if it’ll work; given how hilariously brittle the comics internet can be, I can see these interviews being fodder for “SEE THESE HACKS KNEW IT WAS A BAD IDEA DEEP DOWN” as much as “They’re not just doing it for the money but had concerns about the necessity themselves.”

(Me, I’m still going to pick up the Cooke books and probably ignore the others…)

Okay, so Spider-Men turns out to be what everyone thought it would be: A crossover between the Marvel and Ultimate Universes where Peter Parker meets Miles Morales and the two celebrate the 50th anniversary of the character by, I don’t know, fighting Doctor Octopus or something.  But putting aside the fact that (a) the two universes crossing over was once described as Joe Quesada as proof that Marvel will be officially out of ideas – A line that he must have regretting saying as soon as he left his mouth, let’s be honest – (b) this feels less like something new and exciting right now and more like the modern version of Spider-Man 2099 Meets Spider-Man (or, for that matter, “Flash of Two Worlds“) and (c) We’ve seen this kind of thing before in “Spider-Wars,” I’m genuinely curious to see what the reaction to this will be; it sounds like a potentially cool story, but without the promise of “IT ALL STARTS/ENDS HERE” that normally accompanies this kind of big announcement, I wonder whether fans will stick with the continuity porn sturm-und-drang of AvX and trade-wait for this…?

Something that comes up a couple of times in this Geoff Johns interview is the seeming importance of DC’s Free Comic Book Day release this year to the DCU as a whole and Justice League specifically; we’re told that the FCBD issue will hint at the future of the team in regards to new members and a shifting public face, as well as evolving the Pandora plot that’s come up a couple of times since the character debuted in Flashpoint #5 last year. What seems interesting about that to me is that it feels like the first time one of the Big Two publishers is making the FCBD release a “must-read” for fans, as opposed to a “Would be nice” added extra.

Marvel was the publisher to push original non-reprint content for FCBD first, in terms of the Marvel/DC axis at least, but all of their books have been seemingly intentionally peripheral in terms of the larger continuity or stories being told (With the potential exception of “Swing Shift,” which previewed the Brand New Day status quo for Amazing Spider-Man months before it actually happened). DC has teased a different route with #0 issues of both Blackest Night and War of the Supermen in the past, but both of those issues have been there to bring readers up to speed and repeat storybeats and information from elsewhere, as opposed to offer anything new in and of themselves. If what Johns is saying about this year’s FCBD title is the case, that sounds like it’ll change this time ’round.

I’m in two minds about this approach. On the one hand, it makes FCBD more of an “event,” with more reason for “regular” fans to go and support their stores on the day, and it also gives readers who’re picking up the DC FCBD book cold more of a sense of “something’s happening!” when they look inside. And yet… It also risks making the DC FCBD book more of a commodity to be hoarded, speculated on and sold on eBay for ridiculously high amounts of money, thereby defeating the “come one, come all!” nature of Free Comic Book Day itself, so… I don’t know. Is it too much to hope that DC will have overprinted/overshipped this book on the possibility that it’s more popular than anyone anticipated…?

This is spectacular, from Tom Brevoort’s Marvel Age of Comics tumblr: A 1968 TV Guide story about the rise of “weirdo superheroes” in cartoons at the time, including concern over the amount of violence, the lack of comedy and the potentially dangerous effects such characters can have on the children. Compare and contrast with the kind of mainstream media coverage something like Avengers vs. X-Men or the New 52 gets these days, and feel either happy at the way in which comic book culture has wormed its way into the mainstream pop culture in the last 40 years or depressed at the fact that no-one uses the phrase “weirdo superheroes” anymore.

So, just how successful was the New 52 relaunch for DC? Marc-Oliver Frisch puts things in an interesting perspective over at The Beat:

The average DC Universe title now sells fewer copies again than it did two years ago (34,456 vs. 35,895), but then again, the company’s main imprint had 20 more titles on sale this time around: In February 2010, it was 47; in February 2012, it’s 67. On balance, consequently, DC is still selling a lot more superhero comics than it has in most months in the last 10 years.

So, that’s… good news, right? Except, of course, as Frisch explains, “The average ‘New 52′ title dropped by 7.6% in February, which is in line with January’s 7.4% drop and suggests that, while the bigger drops seem behind us, the numbers haven’t quite found their level yet, either.”

Over at Bleeding Cool, Rich Johnston is suggesting that DC is taking a very pro-active response to these numbers with Eddie Berganza’s new role at the publisher being one that involves “a heavy culling and reworking of the DC New 52.” We’ve already seen the publisher’s willingness to cull multiple titles due to sales, and more of the line is trending towards that low lever now… So just how big a cull should we be expecting sometime soon, I wonder…?

This summer, Matt Fraction and David Aja reteam for… a revival of the Jam:

Okay, probably not. Marvel’s keeping tight-lipped about the mystery series bringing the two Immortal Iron Fist creators back together until this weekend’s C2E2, but even just this stylized “coming soon” image can probably evoke some level of detective work as to what the ongoing series will turn out to be, right…? Have at it in the comments.

Okay, this is just spectacular – Designer and illustrator Rory Phillips‘ reimagining of DC’s Birds of Prey, from the Superhero of The Month blog:

Here’s his explanation of the look:

I re-imagined Birds of Prey as a ‘Vigilante Scooter Club’: Tough and sporty roller derby-type girls with DIY costumes that are functional, but also fashionable enough for Gotham’s trendiest dive bars. For a smart, design-conscious woman like Barbara Gordon, a utility belt just isn’t very stylish. Instead she has a more functional and fashionable messenger bag, with plenty of room for a Bat-laptop, Bat-tazer, Bat-tonfa, and any other Bat-device the plot might require, and her scooter is festooned with a variety of high tech electronics. Black Canary plays Punk to Batgirl’s Mod; the fishnets are more about attitude than sexuality. An experienced and dangerous street-fighter, she isn’t afraid to use brass-knuckles or kubotan to keep the odds in her favor, and boxing wraps help keep her knuckles protected from even the hardest skulls. These two might not see eye to eye on technology and fashion, but they do agree, jump-boots are excellent for kicking you in the face. These characters are smart, strong and empowered, I wanted the design and style to reflect that.

Hey, DC! Can we have an Earth-3 book featuring these two, please…?

(Via.)

Over at Bleeding Cool, Brendan Connelly puts two-and-two together about a top-secret Disney animated project and comes up with potential awesome:

My reading of that, and it’s not based on anything more than trying to fit all of these pieces together, is that Hall is working on some kind of crossover with Marvel, but it’s not an adaptation of an actual comic book or character that already exists. The comment makes sense if it’s an all-new Marvel movie, created in collaboration with Disney.

That would surprise for what it is – a Disney-Marvel superhero film – and also for what it’s not – a known Marvel property.

Brendan admits that he’s potentially misreading breadcrumbs of information, but if he’s right, this feels like a big deal – Not only the kind of crossover synergy many have been expecting since the buyout (Certainly more than the ABC/Marvel deals), but also what might be the first attempt at a high profile all-new Marvel character since… who? I can’t even think of the last high profile all-new Marvel creation offhand. If this is really what the project ends up being, this could be massive… and ultimately more important than Avengers vs. X-Men in the long run.

(Adding my own, completely uninformed, blue sky speculation to the mix: If Disney and Marvel teamed up for an animated reboot of Marvelman, I think I’d kind of love that…)

Despite the presence of the uber-massively ordered Avengers vs. X-Men #1, overall comic orders last month were down compared with March 2011 according to ICv2, ending a seven month streak of increased order activity year-on-year. A sign that the bloom is finally off the New 52 rose? Possibly, apparently:

[T]hough the March 2012 year-over-year declines were not particularly large, and March numbers could be something of an aberration caused by the fact that there were only 4 ship weeks in March of 2012 versus 5 in 2011, they still present something of a red flag for the bull market in comics which began last August with the advent of the Justice League, the first of DC’s “New 52” titles, which finally relinquished its hold on the top spot on the charts in March.  If comics sales resume their growth in April, then March is just a blip, an aberration due largely to the calendar, but if the declines continue it might indicate that the head of steam that the market picked up with the launch of the “New 52” is petering out as the relaunched titles age.

With both the full-spread of AvX and the entirety of Before Watchmen on the horizon, it’ll be interesting to see if the drop-off in New 52 interest is offset by this year’s big events, or whether the last seven months will end up being the aberration…

What is going on with the Powers TV pilot? Not only has it lost its Deena, now it also turns out to have lost its Cutter and be facing major rewrites. CBR talked to the former Cutter, Khary Payton, who suggested the show is undergoing some largescale recreation:

Unfortunately, we – all of the actors – got released. They’re literally starting over. They want to do it again. And fortunately and unfortunately, I’m doing another show, and I still hope beyond hope that I can be a part of ‘Powers.’ But I’m happy to be working. But things are happening with ‘Powers’ absolutely. There are scripts being turned out. They just want more material to hear that they’re getting it right.

On the plus side, more scripts means it’s still an ongoing concern. But “literally starting over” and the actors getting released? Looks like it may be some time before we ever get to see this show…

Just how big a deal is Astonishing X-Men #51 expected to be? Well, this unusual indicator appeared in Marvel’s most recent shipping update to retailers:

ASTONISHING X-MEN #51 will have everyone inside and outside of the industry talking. Marvel has secured mainstream coverage both on-air and in print, for something that has never been seen inside the pages of a Marvel comic. Not only that, but some retailers are already saving the date and are hosting special wedding events in their stores.

Retailers who exceed 300% of their orders of ASTONISHING X-MEN #49 with their orders by FOC for ASTONISHING X-MEN #51 can order as many copies as they wish of the ASTONISHING X-MEN 51 CREATE YOUR OWN WEDDING VARIANT. Note: details on this variant will be revealed in the coming weeks and is NOT similar to the customized Comic Shop Variants, most recently offered on Spider-Men #1.

Special wedding events in their stores? Clearly, Marvel is going to be playing these particular nuptials for all their potential PR possibilities. It’ll be interesting to see how a “Create Your Own Wedding Variant” compares in popularity to the more traditionally masculine “Have Spider-Man carry you through the air” or “Destroy your comic store” variants, too…

In the middle of an amusing/horrifying blog post from Jim Shooter full of settling scores and gossip, there’s this wonderful New Universe image by Bill Sienkiewicz:

It’s an image that makes me think two things:

1. Sienkiewicz can paint the hell out’ve anything, can’t he?

2. The New Universe was filled with such good intentions that just fell at the last hurdle of execution. I have a lot of fond memories of the NU, arguably more than it actually deserves, because it launched around the same time that I found my first comic store and so I was definitely an early investor, so to speak. But looking at that poster, I find myself wondering how the designs for Spitfire (The proto-Iron Man on the left) or Justice (The guy in the trenchcoat and tracksuit, also on the left) ever got approved. I still love Star Brand, though – If ever there was a character I’d happily see revived at Marvel these days, it’s him…

Here’s something you don’t see a lot: An outright attempt to lobby comic professionals to vote for one of this year’s Eisner Award nominees… for national pride. Blank Slate’s (wonderful) Nelson anthology is up for Best Anthology, leading to the Forbidden Planet blog to make this plea:

In an English-speaking comics world, the USA is almost monopolistically dominant on a publishing level. Our creators have, of course, done well, with Nick Abadzis, Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, Sean Phillips and more winning in recent years, but UK comics publishers have been almost invisible. Only Fanfare have had 3 or 4 nominations, on each occasion for a translation of Japanese material. It could be that Nelson is one of the few comics that you can feel the British stamp on from creator, through subject matter to publisher. A British comic nominated in the most important English-speaking awards.

There isn’t much poetry in commerce; it’s more often than not about promotion irrespective of artistic quality, and winning an award and moreover wanting to win one, as I do, is often more about commerce than art. I think for Nelson though, the impetus to vote for those of us in the UK industry is much more worthy. To those yet to read it, Nelson may appear as just another anthology of comics stories on one level, but on another it’s more – it’s a calling card for a whole industry wanting to come into being as legitimate and sustainable. With no native awards to give our books credence – the once relevant Eagles having dissipated their impact in too many years of disorganisation and the sometimes wild results of an open popular vote – UK comics have had no way of making a book something that could be promoted just as hard as Habibi or the latest Clowes.

Should Nelson win this award, the industry will have that chance.

I have to admit, as a former Brit, this does kind of appeal to me – Not least of all because Nelson really is a great book and a fine example of British comics talent that the rest of the world doesn’t get to see nearly enough.

For everyone that expected Bryan Hitch to immediately go to DC as soon as his Marvel exclusive finished… Does a cover sate your hunger?

EARTH 2 #1 VARIANT EDITION (MAR120146) now features a cover by Bryan Hitch. The standard cover now features the Ivan Reis & Joe Prado cover solicited to be the variant.

Wonder if we’ll see his interiors on an Annual or special edition at some point…?

Over at Kotaku, Steven Totilo says goodbye to print comics as he switches to digital… and then remembers what is so great about comic stores:

It’s strange. I went to a funeral on Saturday. Afterward, without a hint of irony, I went to Midtown Comics. It was my first visit in two months, the longest period of time during my adult life that I’ve ever spent away from a comics shop (I know it was two months, because there were two new issues of a monthly comics catalog for me to buy and anxiously dog-ear). I was happy to be back, to smell the paper and squeeze around the people reading comics in the shop as if it was a library.

There were a lot of people shopping there. That made me feel good. There was also something else: a woman whose face was painted blue. She was dressed in long white robes and held a white lightsaber. She was just browsing for comics. No big deal. She was awesome. You can’t get a scene like that on your iPad. So, Midtown Comics has got that. It’s got a hook. That means no matter how many thousands of dollars I spend in the iPad comics shop next, I’ll always go back, at least for a look.

Brian Hibbs has talked before about the truest value of a good comic store as being a curator and guide to what’s good and what’s worth your time that you may not have otherwise discovered (I’ll always hold Brandon Graham’s King City up as my example of this; I found the original Tokyopop version of this at Comix Experience in San Francisco when it came out, not knowing what it was or having heard of Graham before, and that’s not something I would’ve been likely to do online), but there is something about the culture and community of a good store that’s an additional, intangible, draw that isn’t available on the internet (Internet comic culture is, let’s be honest, far less kind and far less inviting you to be kind than the real world version). Reason #23 that I’d never want to go fully digital: I’d really miss going to the store.

Sure, there’s a lot of snark to be made about the news that Brian Michael Bendis is writing a how-to-write-comics book for Random House (It’ll be decompressed, so the first volume just covers turning on your computer and opening Microsoft Word! It’ll just be passages cut-and-pasted from David Mamet and Aaron Sorkin! and so on and so on), but Bendis has been teaching a class on the subject at Portland State University for a few years now that is, according to friends who’ve taken it, pretty damn wonderful (as well as a who’s who of current comic creators: Matt Fraction and Dark Horse editor Diana Schutz are just two of the guest lecturers in the class).

Reading the announcement, though, I started to wonder about the How-To-Make-Comics books out there these days: Off the top of my head, there’s Will Eisner’s classic Comics and Sequential Art, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden’s Drawing Words & Writing Pictures (and its upcoming follow-up, Mastering Comics) and Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics sequel, Making Comics, as well as things like The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Creating A Graphic Novel and the spectacular How to Draw Comics The Marvel Way (Not to mention the countless DC Comics Guide books or generic brand equivalents). Hell, even Alan Moore has done one. And, as much as I want to read what Bendis has to say about the form and function of creating something in the comic book medium – and I really do, I love it when he goes into this kind of thing during his Word Balloon interviews – part of me wonders, is there enough space in this particular market for another how-to book?

(Question #2: Do current creators ever reference books like those mentioned above as things that helped them learn their skills? I’m genuinely curious as to who reads those books, and whether they then go on to break into comics as a career. The Eisner and McCloud books, I feel, are must-reads for anyone interested in comics, and the Abel/Madden book is similarly great, but the others…?)

What was behind Tabula Rasa as a location and concept crossing over from Uncanny X-Force to Uncanny X-Men…? Kieron Gillen explains:

In an X-Summit early last year, we were talking about our plans, and during Rick [Remender]‘s he mentioned — as an aside — this newly evolved Savage-Land-esque place he was introducing. I just sort of leaped onto it excitedly, throwing a half dozen quirks that the evolution-in-a-day thing could lead to… It felt like the right thing to do. It folded X-Force back into the Marvel Universe, making it clear that the wiping out of a town isn’t something you just do in a panel and never refer to again. And after Rick introduced this place, I felt it worthwhile to try and populate it and make it a fun location people could use as settings for stories in the future.

Rick and I made sure we were introducing the bits and pieces in the script the other wanted. If you nose in X-Force‘s pages, you can see things like the tapeworm people foreshadowed, and generally, we wanted to make a new toy for the MU. A separately-evolved pocket! “Jurassic Park” meets Spore meets Area-51! That kind of thing. Rick and I just like making new stuff up, basically. It was a good opportunity to do so.

I’ve said before that I think that the X-Books now are better than they’ve been in a long time – since Morrison’s run, maybe, or even before that; certainly, with UXM, UXF and Wolverine and the X-Men, there’s a stronger line of books now than then – and seeing “new” ideas like Tabula Rasa or the reborn Angel cross between books really reinforces an organic bond between the books more than any crossover could. If the post-AvX Marvel Universe, whatever it ends up looking like, can spread that kind of magic around, it’ll be in good shape.

If the news yesterday that Boom! Studios was going exclusive with Diamond Distributors wasn’t particularly interesting to you, maybe there’s one wrinkle in the press release that could be worth a closer look. Ross Richie is quoted as explaining that the exclusive deal not only gives retailers a higher ordering discount, but also offers “better fill rates on comic book reorders; and our entire graphic novel backlist inventory will now be available for immediate ordering.” Reorders seem to be a big deal for Boom!; back when they partnered with Haven in 2009, it was to ensure faster reorder shipments (Haven closed last year, which also leaves me wondering if Boom!’s exclusivity announcement is a weird PR opportunity that doesn’t exactly make sense; without Haven, did Boom! even have another direct market distributor for the last six months? Weren’t they exclusive by default?), which leaves me to wonder if Boom! is suffering from the kind of systematic, repetitive under-ordering that Image Publisher Eric Stephenson wrote about last week. Marvel and DC aside, is any publisher in the direct market getting enough copies ordered in the first round of ordering…? And if not, how easily can that kind of thing be course-corrected?