Paul Jenkins’ Sidekick
Written by Paul Jenkins; Illustrated by Chris Moreno
Image
$16.99

I don’t usually like superhero parody a whole lot. It’s an overdone subgenre and most of the parodies I’ve read just repeat the same tired jokes endlessly. I’d list a couple of examples for you, but honestly it makes my head hurt to think about. I actually am pretty fond of superhero comics and dwelling on their worst qualities isn’t something I enjoy. If I find a particular aspect of superhero comics unappealing or ridiculous, I’ll just quit reading comics that have that trait. I certainly don’t want to read a parody comic that highlights it and makes it the center of focus.

Sidekick isn’t that kind of parody. I actually had to think about the word “parody” for a bit to decide if it even applies to Sidekick, but I think it does. Certainly there are some fun, silly superhero comics that get inappropriately labeled as parody, but they’re more celebrating the genre than making fun of it. It’s the difference between laughing with someone and laughing at him. Let me repeat that it’s certainly valid to laugh at superhero comics; I’d just prefer that comics that do that be, you know, actually funny. And that’s what separates Sidekick from the usual parody.

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Mark Andrew Smith and Dan Hipp sent us an early gift this year … all eight pages of their Amazing Joy Buzzards story from the Image Comics Holiday Special that came out in 2005.

Smith and Hipp are currently working on volume 3 of the AJB saga, titled “MonsterLove.” It’s due next July.

Click on the images to see a larger version, and enjoy!

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IGN.com talks with writer Robert Kirkman about his Image Comics superhero series, Invincible, which is approaching its 50th issue:

IGN Comics: Would you say Invincible has a major, recurring villain in the same way that Spider-Man has Green Goblin or Batman has the Joker?

Kirkman: Definitely not, possibly to the detriment of the series. There are tons of different villains in the series – scads and scads, in fact. As far as one taking center stage and moving to the forefront to become the one guy he fights over and over again – it hasn’t really happened. I don’t know that it ever will. It’s such a major facet of superhero comics that I think it starts to get a little hokey after a while.

It’s nice to have a central nemesis and a recurring battle between two forces. That’s all well and good, but when you’ve fought Doctor Octopus 4,000 times and the outcome is always the same, it gets to be a little unrealistic. With Invincible I’m trying to do fantastic, crazy, bizarre superhero stuff, but at the same time, I’m trying to keep it more grounded than your average Marvel or DC book. Part of that is not having characters show up and basically do the same thing every time they appear.

Kirkman also discusses the changes that begin with Issue 51, including a new costume.

The Independent Film Channel is adding three new series from Japanese animation distributor FUNimation Entertainment to its line-up, including Witchblade, Speed Grapher and Hell Girl:

IFC has found fan favorites in anime fare before, such as 2007 series Samurai 7, Basilisk and Gunslinger Girl. As the young male-skewing genre’s popularity continues to grow online, on home video and on other cable networks, IFC has joined other cable networks that program the genre in making itself a presence at comic-book convention Comic-Con.

The titles build on other fare the network has programmed outside of independent films, such as infamous R. Kelly rock opera Trapped in the Closet and acquired musical sketch comedy The Whitest Kids U Know, as well as original series The Business and The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman.

“We consider ourselves the voice of independent culture, and we’ve taken that on as our mission,” IFC general manager Evan Shapiro said. “People who come to IFC want different, new things and new cultures, and anime represents the epitome of that kind of world culture.”

Witchblade premieres in January, with Speed Grapher following in March and Hell Girl — which I hadn’t heard of but which sounds the coolest to me — “sometime in 2008.”

Tokypop and DC Comics lead the final nominations for the Young Adult Library Services Association’s annual list of Great Graphic Novels For Teens with 23 nods each.

DC’s nominations include titles from its CMX, Minx and Vertigo imprints.

Tokyopop and DC are followed by Del Rey with 11 nominations, Viz Media with 10, Go! Comi with eight, and First Second and Marvel with seven each.

YALSA is part of the American Library Association.

The full list of nominees can be found here.

(Link via David Welsh)

Universal Pictures sent out a press release yesterday saying that the movie adaptation of Wanted will hit theaters on June 27 next year, rather than March 28.

From the release:

In making the date-change announcement, Nikki Rocco, Universal Pictures’ President of Distribution, stated, “After an early look at “Wanted”, we are certain that it fulfills its promise as a stunning, committed, thrilling, eye-popping vision that introduces a bold new narrative. We believe it can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the event titles of the summer and will give audiences a chance to discover a fresh new alternative. We are excited to date the film on June 27.”

Hawaiian Dick Volume 1: Byrd Of Paradise
Written by B. Clay Moore; Illustrated by Steven Griffin
Image
$14.95

I’d forgotten how much I liked Hawaiian Dick. Because both the inaugural mini-series and its follow up The Last Resort had problems coming out on time, it’s been tough to keep enthusiastic about Danny Byrd mysteries. In fact, after The Last Resort, I promised myself that I’d wait for the trades on any future installments of the series.

But my fondness for the concept must be deep-rooted because my resolve to wait for trades was severely tested by the arrival of the new Hawaiian Dick ongoing. And though I’m still skittish about buying it in individual issues, the new series got me thinking about revisiting the original. And doing that has me even more tempted to start picking up the singles again.

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The New York Times looks at what writer Joseph V. Tirella dubs “the coffee table-ization of comics,” paying special attention to the oversized hardcovers produced by DC and Marvel. Chalk one up to an aging readership with deep pockets:

While the sales of single-issue copies are down from the boom years of the early 1990s, the comic business as a whole has been rebounding, fueled partly by the demand for high-end collections by an aging audience nostalgic for the comics of its youth.

“The publishers are doing this because the market exists now,” said Kuo-Yu Liang, a vice president for Diamond Comic Distributors, the largest distributor of English-language comics in the world. “It reflects the demographics of the consumer, who is both older and more affluent. They can now afford to buy the complete Fantastic Four or Frank Miller’s ‘Sin City Library’ for $100 or so a piece.”

[snip]

Paul Levitz, president and publisher of DC, said, “We love our passionate readers who spend from $1,000 to $1,500 a year on comics, but there’s a lot more people who are willing to pay $300 or $400 a year on graphic novels and luxury editions.”

Fantagraphics and Image also receive brief mentions.

Of course, that Levitz quote has me reaching for a calculator to see whether I qualify as a “passionate reader.” I don’t think I make the cut.

It was, of course, a bad week for those who liked to get their comics from Z-CultFM, with the site removing all Marvel trackers, and later, DC and Top Cow trackers, after threats of legal action that softened as diplomacy proved as effective as promises of legal destruction. This was the Civil War of comic stories this year, splitting Newsarama readers into those who thought it may have been one of the biggest stories of 2007 and those who just didn’t get what the fuss was about. “Which Side Are You On?” indeed, but wait until the other shoe drops and every Newsarama poster discovers that their friends and family have been replaced by Marvel and DC employees in disguise, dropping subtle hints that maybe Countdown isn’t that bad after all. That’s the kind of Secret Invasion that’ll get complaints going in seconds…

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Great White Snark shares some pictures from a comic show in Hayward Calif., where they gave away props from the recent episode of Numb3rs that featured the comic convention:

First, the guys at the admission desk were handing out props from an upcoming episode of Numb3rs, a formulaic CSI-knockoff on CBS that I don’t need to have watched to know that I don’t want to watch it. (You know what I mean.) Anyway. On the November 23 episode, Numb3rs in some way involves comic books. It’s at a comic book store, or some comic book nerd is killed, or something. I don’t know. The details don’t matter. What does matter is that instead of licensing actual comic books to use as props, the show had to commission artists to create cover artwork for imaginary titles. Then the prop guys literally glued the quite-impressive fake covers to the fronts of actual comic books.

And here’s the fun part, for us comic book geeks: figuring out which real comics were considered inconsequential enough to ruin with a slathering of glue. (Any comic book geek will tell you that he instinctively protects even his most financially worthless books.) Victims included Super Soldiers (giggle), a Marvel UK title that’s just as bad as the title suggests. Cable, a spinoff book about one of Marvel’s (formerly?) popular mutant characters. And Youngblood, a spectacularly bad book that was one of the flagship titles of Image Comics, a publishing company that formed when a bunch of talent left Marvel to do their own thing.

JK already caught the big Publisher’s Weekly story this week, regarding Francoise Mouly’s plans to launch a children’s graphic novel line.

But, naturally, the folks at PW had plenty of other goodies to share, including an interview with Fred Hembeck about his upcoming Image Omnibus:

PWCW: What can readers expect to see in the Omnibus?

FH: Besides all the Dateline:@#$! strips that appeared in The Buyer’s Guide in the late ’70s and into the early ’80s, nearly two hundred strips from the feature’s mid-’90s revival are included, as is all the material from seven Fantaco books from the ’80s—now all are long out of print. But it was Erik who suggested I open the flood gates and include all sorts of other stuff, so I included a number of my own characters like The Dog and Mr. Mumbo Jumbo in the mix. A fair amount of the material has either never seen the light of day, or only shown up in the most obscure of places (for instance, there’s a whole section of strips done for an apa [amateur publishing association], an original audience of roughly forty). Cover redos, Christmas cards, Internet illos, commissions–even two page of nature art! It’s all here—heaven help us, it’s all here…

PWCW: How does it feel to look back on your career through this 900 page book?

FH: It’s a bit sobering—where did those thirty years go anyway? And to be totally honest with you, I couldn’t help but notice a few definite ebbs in my flow—by the time I was finishing up my first run on Dateline:@#$! circa 1983, I was clearly losing interest. But Al and Erik wanted all of those strips included, so there are a few grimace inducing pages in the book (but, I’d like to think, only a few. Really.). Otherwise, it might be fun for readers to see how often I repeat the same gags over and over during a three decade span—my sense of humor hasn’t changed all that much, it would seem.

Also this week: A profile of Malaysian cartoonist Lat; Mike Richardson talks about his upcoming horror miniseries; and Tokyopop picks up some titles from ADV.

Aron Head, whose own blog you can check out here, is providing us on-the-scene reports from Wizard World Texas this weekend in Arlington, Texas.

Saturday is the meat and potatoes of most conventions, and Wizard World Texas is no different. Great, huge, sweaty gobs of people plowed through the Arlington Convention Center (Huge because, hey, most of us are; and sweaty because DFW weather’s been a bit wonky this November and the climate control was a bit off). Lots and lots of people.

I started the day by attending he “Web Comics: Development and Marketing” panel comprised of DJ Coffman (cartoonist, Hero by Night and Yirmuhmah!) and Christian Beranek (writer, 20%) among others. The subject of the forum, developing and marketing webcomics, was explored based on personal experience. Both Coffman and Beranek encouraged building community by participating in forums and posting on people’s blogs. Also, they agreed that it is difficult to build a community of fans absent regular, daily updates.

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At Spindle, Guy LeCharles Gonzalez talks with NYC Mech writer and 24Seven editor Ivan Brandon about his influences, New York City and the collaboration process:

SPINDLE: Writing is typically considered a solitary endeavor, but comic books are often a collaborative effort between the writer(s), artist(s) and editor(s). How much does your sense of control vary from project to project, collaborator to collaborator?

Brandon: I’ve been lucky enough that for whatever reason, I’m able to keep my control (for lack of a better word) in most situations… when I have ideas that are not script-specific they tend not to be superfluous, I guess… and my collaborators have almost always embraced them. I get absurdly passionate about certain elements that other writers would never think about… design, color, etc…

The great thing is that so far even the people who employ me to write for their existing properties have allowed and encouraged me to bring more to the table than just the writing… I guess the luxury (or curse) of being offered the job when you’re clearly the odd duck, so to speak… is that your editors know your process is different… it’s why they called you in the first place.

(Link via Dirk Deppey.)

Following up on my post from yesterday where we shared some of the concept art for Mark Andrew Smith and Paul Maybury’s upcoming graphic novel series Aqua Leung, today I have some really cool preliminary pages from the book.

But first, Dick who hates my blog made a comment on his blog that he wasn’t familiar with Maybury or his work, so I did a little research on the artist. By “research” I mean I took a gander at his web page and LiveJournal. Here are five facts I learned about him:

1. It’s Maybury, not Mayberry, as I learned yesterday when he emailed me. Again, my apologies. I wasn’t the only one, even though that’s no excuse.
2. He has a story in 24Seven Vol. 2 called “Give Me Some Color,” which Entertainment Weekly called “endearing.” He’s also participating in the PopGun anthology that’s coming out from Image Nov. 21 (which is co-edited by Mark Andrew Smith, BTW).
3. He recently moved from Boston to Austin, which I would consider an upgrade (of course, you could replace “Boston” with just about any other city’s name, and I’d consider it an upgrade, congestion and traffic notwithstanding). He moved to the Lone Star State just in time to participate in Free Comic Book Day; you can see his entry here.
4. He’s part of the Activate crew; check out his strip, Party Bear, over on their site.
5. He dressed up as Spider-Man for Halloween.
6. Here’s a bonus fact … in this interview over on the main site that Chris Arrant did back in February ’06, Maybury talks about the job he had back then:

RAMA: What do you currently do for a living?

PM: I seriously thought I was going to work in a music store for the rest of my life until I blew up in my boss’s face and walked out on them. I currently work for a semi hippy corporation grocery thingamabob as a sign maker — which pretty much means I’m the guy that draws pictures of salmon on sea food chalk boards and draws pictures of cup cakes and Parmesan cheese around the store. I’m almost positive if I ever make it big in comics I’m going to see cupcakes selling on EBay or way more than I ever got paid to draw them.

You can see some of his sign artwork for Whole Foods here.

Anyway, on to the art.

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Flight: Volume One
Published by Image
$19.95

I’ve hit a sad patch in my review pile where nothing’s grabbing me enough to want to write about it, so here’s another look at an older book worth another look.

Written and Illustrated by Bengal, Bill Mudron, Catia Chien, Clio Chiang, Chris Appelhans, Derek Kirk Kim, Dylan Meconis, Enrico Casarosa, Erika Moen, Hope Larson, Jacob Magraw, Jake Parker, Jen Wang, Joel Carroll, Kazu Kibuishi, Kean Soo, Khang Le, Neil Babra, Phil Craven, Rad Sechrist and Vera Brosgol

It’s weird, but as afraid of heights as I am, I love to fly. Especially when the plane gets above the clouds and you can’t see the earth… just white fluffiness from horizon to horizon. It’s otherworldly and peaceful.

There’s a reason so many superheroes fly and it’s not just to make it easier for them to get around. It’s a common fantasy that we earthbound creatures have. How many times have you been stuck in rush hour traffic and wished that the year 2000 had yielded all those flying cars we thought we’d have by then when we were growing up? Up you’d go and off you’d go, without having to worry about lanes or lights or signs or other cars or even pesky geography like trees and rivers. We’ve all wished we could fly.

The creators of Flight set out to tell stories around that theme. Coming together from all corners of the internet, these online cartoonists banded together to give us a look – sometimes literal, sometimes metaphorical – at what it means to fly.

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As I mentioned earlier today. Mark Andrew Smith is also working on a new series called Aqua Leung with artist Paul Maybury. Per Smith, the graphic novel series is about a boy who would be king of the seven seas:

Aqua Leung is the story of a small boy who is to become the conqueror of the seven seas and eventually the world. Each sea kingdom is ruled by a different oversized despot who has a scepter. With each sea scepter that Aqua collects he gets more powerful, ominous and brooding, and the octopus nubs in his back grow out larger and larger. Aqua’s adventures include: training under Sonny the fighting fish and the quest for the blue sea flame all which lead him to begin the revolution that will unite the sea as one.

Smith sent me a bunch of concept art and previews from the book … check’em out after the jump:

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It’s been awhile since we’ve seen a new Amazing Joy Buzzards comic, the fun Image series by Mark Andrew Smith and Dan Hipp. Per Smith, AJB vol. 3, titled “MonsterLove,” will come out as an original graphic novel in July.

Smith also sent over a bunch of preview art for another project he has coming out next year, called Aqua Leung, which I should have a post up about shortly …

In a week of carefully orchestrated “surprises” in the comic world, it wasn’t Annihilation: Conquest #1′s return of a classic Marvel villain or even Mark Bagley shock move over to DC (Feel free to guess what book you think Mark’s going to work on, by the way) that gave us the biggest shock of the past seven days. No, that accolade happens to belong to the stunning fact that the Gordon Lee trial in Georgia was declared a mistrial during the opening statements.

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So Brigham Young University has this web forum called The 100 Hour Board, where a group of BYU students take any and all questions about, well, anything, and attempt to answer them in 100 hours. A lot of the questions center on the BYU campus and college life, which you would expect, but some are a bit more off the wall:

Q: Dear Humble Master,

I have a mission for you.

My pseudonym stems from a conversation I had several years ago with Ambrosia, where I mused about the possibility of having a secret superhero identity . . . that no one had ever heard of:
“I’m Goldfish Girl!”

“You’re who?”

“You know, Goldfish Girl! Defender of carp!”

[Silence]

“Goldfish Girl? The one with the powers of a . . . fish?”

“Sorry. Not ringing a bell.”

And thus was born my alias (on this side of the Board, anyway).

Unfortunately, I never really fleshed out the history, mission, and specific powers of Goldfish Girl, which is where you come in. Who is Goldfish Girl? What does she stand for? Who is her alter ego? What are her powers and how did she acquire them?

All things being equal, I’d prefer to exist in the same universe as Batman, et al., but I can stand to be a Marvel character, if necessary.

- Goldfish Girl

The person answering goes on to give her possible origins for both the Marvel and DC universe, but it’s the Image one I really enjoyed:

Image Comics: Image Comics was started in 1992 by seven popular artists who left Marvel and DC to start their own publishing company. These artists undertook the task of writing and drawing the comics produced by Image (imagine if seven popular writers broke away from Marvel and DC, formed a company called Text Comics, and tried to do their own drawing and you may spot the flaw in their plan). The early Image comics were all flash and no substance, usually employing large splash-pages of the whole team standing in heroic poses, with lots of little dialogue boxes around the page. The stories were generally poorly constructed and had little point other than to show of the artistic talent of the creators (as a side note: Image Comics still exists, and their current work is far different from the early days of the company described above).

The Image Goldfish Girl has no real origin story or purpose. She can breathe underwater, but it’s never really established why. Mostly she swims around in heroic poses without any costume or clothing at all, but with water bubbles conveniently placed to allow the comic book to be sold in American stores.

(Thanks, Joseph).

Publishers Weekly Comics Week shows their love for the written word (or at least the folks who type it) with a sizable profile of Robert Kirkman (and his ever growing list of ongoing projects) and an interview with Joss Whedon, who plans to do another Serenity mini-series:

PWCW: Can you tell me anything about the plot of the second miniseries?

JW: The second one basically involves the rather stunning concept of the gang trying to pull a heist that doesn’t go completely wrong. And what happens when things go right for them, how that’s not going to work at all.

PWCW: Does it have a title yet?

JW: Better Days. And that’s also a reference to the fact that it takes place before the movie and before certain people were iced.

Also in this week’s newsletter: A look at DMP’s attempt to adapt Japanese novelist Hideyuki Kikuchi’s popular prose novel series, Vampire Hunter D; an interview with Shooting War creators Dan Goldman and Anthony Lappe; a story on audiobook adaptations of Infinite Crisis and 52; and this month’s best-seller list.