I met Tammy Oler from Bitch magazine at NYCC (bonding in the Women in Comics panel, yay!) and realized I’d been lax in reading her blog at the site. So I’m making up for it now, because she’s got a post up about, well, Jane Austen and the Zombie Apocalypse.

I am a bad feminist English major and I have never actually read a Jane Austen book. I know! And somehow I think I should read the actual Pride and Prejudice before taking on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies–but I don’t wanna! I saw the movie with Keira, so that’s enough, right?

No, I know it’s not. But I promise to read the original later, I promise. For now, this just sounds like far more fun than I can handle. It hits the street on April 15, which is exactly ten days before my birthday. Coincidence? I think not.

Tammy also notes that:

the critically acclaimed British television series Lost in Austen is getting the Hollywood treatment, with none other than Sam Mendes producing.

And in even weirder news:

Finally, the latest (and strangest) news: Elton John’s Rocket Pictures is developing the film Pride and Predator, about an alien that crash lands in the world of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and starts killing everyone.  I predict that this may set a new standard for bodice ripping.

Because really, what’s more fun than classic highbrow romance mingled with lowbrow genre films? Guess I’m going to have to get around to reading Austen soon. And really, some of these stories just beg and plead for comics adaptations. Dynamite, I’m lookin’ at you…

Likely surprising very few, the Narnia film franchise, or at least the next one, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, has found a new home after being dropped by Disney last month. Variety Reports that Fox will distribute and co-finance the film under their “Fox 2000″ division. Walden Media, the owners of the license, already had a working relationship with 20th Century Fox through the shared and appropriately named Fox Walden label. Nothing is in stone yet as far as script and the ever important money question go, but the studios hope to start filming this summer for a 2010 holiday season release. Prince Caspian finished as the #10 grosser at the Box Office last year, and Dawn Treader has a lot of the magic and fantastic aspects missing from the second book/film, which the studios hope will drive higher earnings.

The principal cast, including Ben Barnes as Caspian, Skandar Keynes as Edmund, and Georgie Henley as Lucy are all signed on to return, and casting for the other roles has already moved forward.

[Via]

Neil Gaiman took home yet another prize this week, this time the American Library Association’s Newbery Medal for The Graveyard Book, his recently-released children’s book.

The NPR story, much to my delight, identifies Gaiman primarily as the author of the Sandman comics, not of Coraline (about to hit the big screen) or Stardust (already did) or any of his other novels.

Gaiman says:

You are on a speakerphone with at least 14 teachers and librarians and suchlike great, wise and good people, I thought. Do not start swearing like you did when you got the Hugo. This was a wise thing to think because otherwise huge, mighty and fourletter swears were gathering. I mean, that’s what they’re for. I think I said, You mean it’s Monday?

The book also has illustrations by our beloved Dave McKean. I don’t know about you, but I still feel it’s a win for comics every time a comics author gets another award, another bit of recognition. And not just because Gaiman started me off on my long addiction to sequential art.

Congratulations, Neil.

Oh Twitter, is there anything you can’t do? The esteemed writer of the soon-to-be-a-movie book Coraline (and a couple of comics you may have heard of like The Sandman and the upcoming Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?) is happy that there’s finally a trailer for the movie adaptation that he enjoys. Just a few minutes ago, he tweeted:

Would people mind spreading http://bit.ly/xTG5 around a bit? Put links up to it and such? It’s the first Coraline trailer I’ve liked

Ask and you shall receive, Mr. Gaiman. Here’s the latest Coraline trailer. Watch it imbedded here, or click through to watch the HD version at Youtube’s site.

It’s always a pleasant surprise to find out that a cute girl, especially one on a geeky show, also happens to be a geek. This morning, Brea Grant, currently Daphne the Speedster on Heroes (and a high point to this season, if I may), posted her Best Books of 2008 list on her blog (Spoiler alert for the most recent Fables trade at the link). It wound up being much more than a top ten, and the reason for that was the inclusion of her favorite comics of the year. A sampling of the comics included one that will make Sarah quite happy, and one of my faves from Marvel:

13) local by brian wood and ryan kelly - i could have put a bunch of stuff up here by brian wood but i chose local just because of it’s amazingness and massiveness. although i feel like i specifically relate to brian’s stuff because we came from similar music scenes, i think anyone could relate to it. some of the best writing out there.

15) x-factor: the only game in town by peter david, pablo raimondi and valentine de landro - i’ve really fallen for the x-factor characters. maybe playing a superhero myself helps with that but overall, i think they are really well-developed and likeably. plus, this includes the one where everyone almost dies in a giant fire. pretty frightening.

Ben Templesmith’s Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, Swallow Me Whole by Nate Powell, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8, and Fables also made her list. Six out of 16 total books isn’t too bad. Both Brian Wood and Ben Templesmith thanked Grant via Twitter. Let the drooling begin… now.

1. An early prototype for the Alfred E. Neuman character appeared in the magazine with the name Melvin Cowznofski.

2. Alfred E. Neuman’s name was originally Alfred L. Neuman. The name change happened in issue #30 (Dec. 1956) because art director John Putnam felt the “E” had more panache.

3. The cover for issue #38 (March 1958) was finger-painted by a celebrity chimpanzee named J. Fred Muggs.

4. Mad #44 (Jan. 1959) featured the debut of Alfred E. Neuman’s girlfriend, Moxie Cowznofski. She looked like a cross between Alfred and Mrs. Cunningham from Happy Days. Not a pretty sight.

5. Mad was the first national magazine to feature President John F. Kennedy on its cover. The issue (#60, Jan. 1961) was printed six weeks before the election, with the reversible front and back covers congratulating Kennedy and Richard Nixon for winning the election. That way vendors could display the magazine with the winner’s respective cover facing front.

6. The great Sergio Aragones has contributed cartoons for every issue of Mad since his debut in 1963, except for one issue. The post office actually lost the artwork Aragones created for the issue.

7. Lawrence of Arabia was the first movie to be spoofed on the cover of Mad (#86, Apr. 1964). The spoof was titled “Alfred of Arabia”)

8. Between the two of them, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have purchased the original art for 11 covers of Mad featuring spoofs of their movies. Spielberg owns the artwork for the cover to issue #1.

9. Though he has appeared on hundreds of covers of Mad over the past fifty-plus years, Alfred E. Neuman has never been pictured in profile. In fact, he has no profile.

The preceding facts can be found in the excellent Mad Cover to Cover collection by Watson-Guptill Publications.

I wonder if I’d have disliked the Twilight books more if I hadn’t been fully prepared by a rather irate segment of the feminist blogosphere for them to be horrifically, offensively sexist.

If I’d just stumbled onto the books and read them, would I be reacting with revulsion instead of “It’s not that bad”?

What’s really starting to get on my nerves, though, is the constant refrain of “I haven’t read the books, but here’s my take on them.” I’m a critic by trade, a rather overeducated one, and so I’ll stand by anyone’s right to read and critique a text. If you read the Twilight books and hated ‘em, great.  However, when you haven’t read the text, I think at some point you lose your right to be snotty about it.

Comic fans are quite used to others’ elitism. We get it all the time, the teasing cracks from our friends who aren’t comic folk, the people who look at you funny when you tell them you were at the comic convention or that the best book you read last year was a trade paperback (notice I didn’t use the term graphic novel).

We even get elitist with each other. I’ve been told several times that I’m not a true comic fan because I don’t really read superhero books. Others get told that they’re stupid for insisting that superhero books can be as good as indie graphic novels. We get called out for reading too much Marvel, too much DC, or too  much indie.

(as usual, possible spoilers below)

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In my Internet trawling yesterday, I came across this Hathor Legacy post (background: The Hathor Legacy is a blog about female characters in media, including comics and the like) on the Neverwhere TV series.

The blogger, Jennifer Kesler, critiqued the female characters (Door and Hunter), noting that Gaiman as scriptwriter avoided all of the predictable pitfalls for writers of women, and many of the less predictable one. Her main complaint was that the female characters were othered–were portrayed as distant and unreadable. She made excellent points about the difference between the way male and female emotions are shown in literature, and noted that after all, men and women aren’t so different, and the best way to write the opposite gender is simply to write them as humans.

The comment thread, for once, is as good as the post. Neil Gaiman himself showed up to comment, and the author and several commenters discussed the pitfalls of extrapolating a critique of one of the author’s works to his entire oeuvre, especially when one hasn’t read every one of those works.

Go ahead and read it. All of it. I’ll wait.

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I make a joke, and it turns out somebody’s actually done it.

Self Made Hero has made a graphic adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Written by David Zane Mairowitz with art by Alain Korkos, it actually looks pretty cool.

The sample art on the page is black and white, simple, angular characters, and with what appears to be third-person narration, which I’d think is necessary for this particular work.

C&P is full of interior monologue, guilt-ridden soliloquies and philosophical treatises masked as dialogue, so I wonder how well it translated to visuals, but I’m intrigued by it. Right now I’m post-holiday broke, though, so unless someone wants to send me a copy, it’ll have to wait.

Anyone read it?

(h/t Kieron Gillen)

Another precinct heard from, as Entertainment Weekly’s new issue includes their takes on the Top Ten of 2008 in several categories.  Interestingly, their books list only has Fiction and Non-Fiction sections; this means that graphic novels get a crack.  The lone graphic entry, clocking in at #5 on the Fiction list, is, as might be expected from its persistent critical acclaim, Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw.

I find this to be an encouraging thing.  Granted, EW doesn’t carry the critical weight of other publications, but it’s nice to see such a visible magazine say, essentially, that this work deserves to be elevated and examined alongside conventional prose.

Howdy, gang. I’m Filip Sablik and I get to live this fanboy’s dream of waking up every morning as the Publisher of Top Cow Productions. Troy Brownfield was kind enough to invite me ramble on occasionally as part of the new Blog @ Newsarama. I was originally planning on starting off with the obligatory introductory post letting you know who I am, but we’ve been getting some attention in the last week online because of an announcement we made recently. And since only my mom and my wife are really interested in hearing me talk about myself, I’ve decided to talk about Top Cow’s pledge to maintain a cover price of $2.99 in 2009.

If this is the first you’ve heard about this topic you can check out Matt Brady’s interview with yours truly HERE. I’ll wait.

Oh, you’re a faithful Newsarama reader and you’re already familiar with the topic? Great. Then let’s get into it.

For the most part the reaction’s been really positive. Fans and retailers seem to appreciate that a publisher is at least addressing the growing concern over rising prices on just about everything. But as it is on the Internet, where would we be without some cynical responses and pointed questions?

So, I thought I’d share some of the thinking that went into making this decision.  It’s a tough market out there. There are a lot of titles both old and new on the shelves each week and more and more collections and graphic novels as well. You only have to look at Diamond’s monthly market share reports to see there’s a growing trend of the bigger companies squeezing out the small by sheer volume. At the same time, you have an economy in recession, unemployment is at a high point, and everyone is uncertain as to what the next six months will bring.

We talk about this stuff all of the time internally here at Top Cow. We love making comics and creating original properties. For the most part, we don’t do licensed books, and despite some of our recent successes we don’t count on money from licensing or other media. We love making comics, it’s the core of our business. So how do we compete in the current market? We focus on giving you (the fan, our customer) more value. Even at $2.99, it’s not a small amount of money to pay for a bit of four-color entertainment. Our announcement to hold the line on our cover price is part of a larger plan. A plan to give you more than the competition. Rather than encouraging our creators to spread out stories over six to eight issues, we’re going in the other direction and pushing for more concentrated, satisfying stories. Ron Marz is writing his first six-issue arc in Witchblade (125-130) in 45 issues, and only because it’s a story we’ve been building toward for over two years. We’re adding pages of bonus back-matter material like interviews, articles, previews and behind-the-scenes commentary.  We’re adding new features and content to our websites and reaching out directly to the fans. We’re committing to long-term creative teams on Witchblade and The Darkness to give a sense of continuity and quality to our flagship titles.  We’re pulling back from conventions to make sure our books ship on time. We’re offering $4.99 introductory trades for Witchblade and The Darkness and value-priced Compendiums with 50 full-color issues.

And yes, our pledge to keep our cover price at $2.99 in 2009 is part of that added value. It’s not altruistic. I won’t pretend it is. My sincere hope is that it will help you give a Top Cow title or two a try. Can I guarantee the price won’t go up the following year? If we gain readership for our titles, it’s certainly possible. I can guarantee we’ll do our best to keep our prices as affordable as possible for as long as possible.

The thing that scares me the most is the thought of an existing comic fan getting fed up with the rising prices of a title they read currently and giving up on comics altogether. That’d be like stopping going out to eat just because your favorite pizza joint raised the price on a large with sausage and peppers, rather than checking out the Tex-Mex join around the corner (but then again, I love comics and I love food). So give a Top Cow book a shot, won’t you? Just try it out for a month or two instead of a book you’re just reading out of habit. Let me know what you thought about it here. You might be surprised how much you enjoy it.

I know I was…

(but more on this in later posts)

Take care,

Filip Sablik

Publisher Guy

Filip Sablik is the Publisher of Top Cow Productions, Inc. He’s been in the business for eight years and is turning 30 this month. Occasionally, he does a bit of writing and drawing. He loves comics.

Top Cow Productions, Inc. was founded by Marc Silvestri, co-founder of Image Comics. Top Cow currently publishes its line of comic books in 21 languages in over 55 different countries. The company has launched 20 franchises (18 original and two licensed) in the industry’s Top 10, seven at #1, a feat accomplished by no other publisher in the last two decades.

(part one of until I get sick of writing about it)

I’m not going to be one of the pretentious folks slagging off the Twilight books until I’ve read all of them. Since I’m two down right now, you’ll be getting plenty of thoughts on the subject later on.

For now, I’ll talk about the movie, which I have seen (and thoroughly, girlishly, insensibly loved).

Once upon a time I was a regular film critic. Even contemplated film school. One of the films that made me think I could do it was Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen. She (and co-writer Nikki Reed, herself thirteen at the time and now one of Twilight’s vampires) managed to capture all the terror of being a teenager.
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Batman Begins writer David Goyer has found two new recruits for his latest project, Fast Forward.

Jack Davenport (the love-sick liutenant from Pirates of the Caribbean) and Courtney Vance (the by-the-book ADA from Law & Order: Criminal Intent) have signed on for the ABC pilot, which some believe will be a “companion show” for the mega-hit Lost.

Fast Forward is based on the 2000 book by Robert J. Sawyer, in which everyone in the world blacks out for two minutes — and in that two minutes, sees a horrifying fast-forward vision from twenty years in the future. While Vance will be playing the FBI bureau chief Stan Wedeck, Davenport will play Lloyd Simcoe, a man struggling to find his son before — at least as his vision predicts — he dies in an accident.

[Via Hollywood Reporter.]

I haven’t seen the movie yet, and I don’t plan on it happening any time soon. However, curious as to what all the hype was about and with a holiday weekend ahead of me, I decided to borrow my friends copies of the four Twilight novels by Stephenie Meyer and see what the hype was all about.

I think I have it all figured out. Meyer’s novels appeal to their mostly tween audience, intellectually, in about the same way that a Snickers bar appeals to the sweet tooth. Sure, it’s not particularly nourishing, but it’s desirable all the same.

For the three people who’ve managed to avoid the ridiculous amount of hype surrounding the Twilight franchise, the story centers around one Bella Swan, a pale, shy creature whose parents are divorced, who is more intelligent than most of her classmates, and who has an alarming propensity for attracting life-threatening situations. The only reason she manages to stay alive past the first couple of weeks in town is that she has attracted the attention of one Edward Cullen.

Cullen is a member of a family of vampires who have given up feeding on humans because they have consciences, or fluffy nougat centers, or something. I forget which. Meyer’s vampires, however, offer a twist on the traditional mythology: instead of burning up in the sunlight, they simply sparkle. The reason for this is lost to the ravages of time, but I have this theory. There was a stripper, see, and it was prom night…

Anyway, Edward and Bella love the improbable love that has never been loved by any lovers before. Like all Mary Sue characters, Bella falls desperately in love with Edward the very first time she lays eyes on him, and the attraction is mutual. There’s nothing original there - every romance story of all time starts and ends with the heroine in love with the hero.

The appeal of these books, just like the aforementioned candy bar, lies not in their ability to offer anything new. Nothing has changed at all except for perhaps a few insignificant details: the names, the setting, and the bizarre iteration of what it means to be a vampire.

Also like a chocolate bar, these books start out appealing and then, as you work your way through them, they begin to get subtly sweeter and sweeter, until they finish on a note that leaves a strange taste and sensation in your mouth that sticks around until you brush your teeth.

In terms of nourishment, I’d be hard pressed to find something with less value and more empty calories than a Snickers bar, or the Twilight series, but I still love them both - something, in both cases, that I occasionally find myself being a little ashamed of.

– Tom Spurgeon interviews James Kochalka.

– The Chicago Tribune talks to the guy who models as Superman for Alex Ross.

– S. Clay Wilson is now out of the ICU.

– Tintin made Herge “sick” according to recently discovered letters.

– I enjoyed this LA Times piece on the legal battles surrounding the Watchmen film.

– Buy a copy of Stan’s Soapbox and get it signed by John Romita Sr.

– If you can read Polish, here’s an interview with Milo Manara where he talks about his X-Men project he’s working on with Chris Claremont.

– Finally, here’s Watchmen, the Condensed Version.

– Alison Bechdel and Harvey Pekar, together at last.

– Steve Duin has some good news about underground cartoonist S. Clay Wilson, who has been in ICU for the past several days.

– Ada Price talks to Dave Gibbons about his new book, Watching the Watchmen.

– Looks like it’s official: Naruto Nation 2009 is totally a go.

– Sam Thielman looks at the significance of Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing in light of the new super-fancy collection coming out soon.

– Over at Stars and Stripes, Gary Trudeau answers some of his critics.

– Van Jensen talks to Mike Allred about the revamped Red Rocket collection.

– Here’s my idea of a fun time: Dan Nadel, Gary Panter and CF sitting around, talking about art and comics.

– Did you know About Comics is 10 years old this year? I didn’t. Chris Murphy has a recollection.

– Sandy Bilus is giving away a copy of Alan’s War over at his blog.

– Oscar Pedro Musibay looks at the Comics Galaxy event that was held at last weekend’s Miami Book Fair.

– Frank Santoro considers the new Popeye collection.

Holy Shi*T! The World’s Weirdest Comic Books
by Paul Gravett and Peter Stanbury
St. Martin’s Press
$12.85.

This is the comic book fan’s equivalent of the novelty gift book, the kind of slender tome you see lying by the cashier counter or near the coffee line at your local big-box corporate book store. If you have a family member who knows about your comics hobby, there’s a good chance (assuming you celebrate the holiday of course) you might get this as a Christmas present (”I saw the title and immediately thought of you.”) (more…)

Man, no one did rique humor better than Arno. He made the smuttiest joke look classy.

HBO has approved production of a pilot for A Game of Thrones, a drama based on George R.R. Martin’s best-selling fantasy epic A Song of Ice and Fire.

“It’s just the pilot so far,” Martin writes on his blog. “They’ll need to see that before they decide whether to proceed with a full season’s episodes. So let’s all hope the pilot will kick serious ass. …  It should. David Benioff and Dan Weiss did a terrific job with the script. And yes, all of you can relax, it’s very faithful. Dan and David will be the executive producers for the pilot and (we hope) the eventual series.”

The cable network acquired the rights to the property nearly two years ago. Plans are for each novel in the planned seven-book cycle to provide a season’s worth of episodes. A Game of Thrones is the title of the first book, which was published in 1996.

The Hollywood Reporter notes that if Thrones receives an episodic order, it would represent the rarerest of TV genres: the full-fledged fantasy series. They’re just too expensive.

Set primarily on a sprawling continent called Westeros, A Song of Ice and Fire centers on a dynastic civil war for the Iron Throne, the threat of creatures from the north known as the Others, and the journey of the exiled daughter of the rightful king.

The fifth book in the series, A Dance with Dragons, is tentatively set for release in April.

Or rather, he illustrated one. Gallery Ghost, from Birdcage Press, and written by Anna Nilsen, offers a decidedly supernatural take through the halls of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

The idea is that at night in the museum, all the ghosts of dead painters like Paul Gauguin and Lyonel Feininger (hey, he did comics too!) come out and put details from their own work into other people’s paintings, a Rousseau cow inserted in van Ostade’s “The Cottage Dooryard” for example.

The reader’s job is to help intern and art student Sarah out and figure out who added to whose painting and which one added the most (just for clarification’s sake, Sala only illustrated the opening and closing pages, plus the portraits of the painters — he didn’t attempt to replicate Mary Cassatt or anything). To help you in your quest, the book comes with its own magnifying glass. How cool is that?

Sala’s art is much softer and friendlier than longtime fans of his work may be used to, but they’ll still want to track it down, if for no other reason than to his rendition of a ghostly Gustav Klmit, something I’m sure readers of Delphine have long wanted to see.