OK, it’s only tangentially related to comics, but it’s too good not to write about. Quirk Books (publishers of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, among others) has a new book of rock show posters coming out this month. Gig Posters Volume 1 (oh please, let there be more) is a gorgeous pile of musical impressions committed to paper, a walk through the visuals inspired by the best bands of our time.

Put together by Clay Hayes of GigPosters.com, the oversized book contains 101 full 11 x 14 posters by a who’s who of rock poster artists, including Tara McPherson, Casey Burns, Diana Sudyka, Drew Millward, Dirk Fowler, Eleanor Grosch, Jason Goad, and many more. The pages are perforated, so you can pull out your favorites and hang them on the wall, or save the whole book for long nights of rock’n'roll reminiscences.

Some of my favorites are the Jermaine Rogers rendering of Morrissey sharing a cocktail with Oscar Wilde, a stark jailhouse window for Hank Williams III by Little Jacket designs, Methane Studios’ overlaid gun for Pretty Girls Make Graves, and the above lipstick print by the Decoder Ring Design Concern.

Gig posters, like comic books, are shunned by the “highbrow” art scene, but we know what they’re all missing out on. Some of these posters are impressionistic, while others incorporate visions of the musicians. The styles range from photo prints to psychedelic bursts of color to detailed drawings, but they all capture something of the flavor of the band or artist they evoke. I’m tempted to get another copy so I won’t be sad tearing pages out of this delicious book.

Farel Dalrymple’s art is art you can love. It takes you to a good place where artist rankings and hipster factors don’t matter. This is just plain good stuff. I had a chance to chat with Farel at the Stumptown Comics Festival and this interview resulted. The man sure gets around and despite any modesty on his part, he is a drawing machine. Check out his LiveJournal. It says it all.

Farel Dalrymple is well known for his on-going comics series, Pop Gun War, published by Dark Horse Comics. He is the founder of the influential Meathaus collective and the winner of a Xeric Grant and Society of Illustrators Gold Medal. This year he is nominated for a couple of Eisner Awards for his collaboration with writer Johnathan Lethem on the Marvel Comics 10-issue series, Omega the Unknown. Currently, he is at work on The Wrenchies. This 250-page, full-color comic is a postapocalyptic fantasy that takes place 3,500 years in the future, featuring a group of street children called “The Bolts.” It is due out in 2010 by First Second. (more…)

I should be doing something else right now, but instead, I am bringing you links. Because I love you. Look grateful.

1. Rock Out With Your Spock Out: an almost-geek girl’s guide to the new Star Trek for non-Trekkies. Which would include me, but this might change my mind. Highlight: comparing Spock to Amelie, noting the hipster cred of his baby bangs (and noting the appeal to geek boys of said baby bangs).

2. More Star Trek, from my editor at my other regular writing gig. Natalia IS a Star Trek fan, and it shows. She too is a Spock fan. Highlight: “With his mod haircut and cool, inquiring gaze, the new Spock might even edge out Legolas as the pointy-eared sexgod of cinema.”

3. For a girl who isn’t a Star Trek fan, I’m sure bringing you a lot of Star Trek links, aren’t I?

4. I swear, this is the last one. Looking Back at Star Trek, with response by Leonard Nimoy.

5. Is Wolverine the most homoerotic superhero movie ever? I don’t know, because I still haven’t seen it–I’m working on it!–but this kind of makes me want to see it more. Don’t hate me. I do wonder, though, why anytime a movie has lots of man-pretty in it, it’s assumed to be targeted to gay men rather than to straight women.

6. On a more serious note, this is an excellent piece on “Mary Stu and Marty Sue”–examining “Mary Sue” characters in all their permutations, in comics and novels. Highlights: the section on Wonder Woman and this final line: “The appeal of Mary Sue, in other words, is that she is a love you can wear like drag.” (h/t When Fangirls Attack)

7. Still serious, an excellent reading of Storm as the “Black Fantasy” character. (h/t Comics Worth Reading)

8. Sin City 2 will include new Sin City stories, according to Splash Page.

Oh yeah, baby, it’s everywhere. And well, out little corner of the internet wouldn’t be complete without it. So, if you’re the one person that hasn’t had this linked to you via twitter, facebook, email, IM, and on your regular RSS feeds yet today, here you go, in all it’s YouTube-y glory, the first trailer for the movie adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s awesome children’s book: Where the Wild Things Are. Bathe in its awesomeness. NOW!

As promised (I hope), this should be my last offering related to the recent WATCHMEN release.

In a GQ issue with a little something for everyone (trying to make it in the publishing biz with Lenny Dykstra sounds more awful than any horror story I’ve caught in recent years about the comics industry), the April 2009 issue of GQ has a feature entitled “The 20 Graphic Novels You Should Read (After “Watchmen”).”

The men in tights are kept to a minimum (Batman doesn’t even get a mention that I’m aware of, save for citing Ed Brubaker — Superman and Madman earn high marks one time each), and it’s a respectable look at how comics aren’t just kids stuff, a noble venture by a magazine geared to get male consumers everywhere to buy $300 Hugo Boss t-shirts.

Of course 20 items isn’t even going to scratch the surface, but what additional suggestions would YOU make to a mainstream publication like GQ?

Robert Crumb reportedly has inked the last page to his interpretation of The Book of Genesis due out by W. W. Norton this fall and going by the title, Robert Crumb’s Book of Genesis. In fact, he’s completed every last bit: the cover, the intro, the commentary and a map that begins the 201 page book. We’ve gotten only a few glimpses of this project. The best is in connection with Phoebe Glockner’s photo comic report from the Angoulême comics festival in 2005 from which the above photo is taken.

The following quote from Crumb is well worth looking back on too. Art critic Robert Hughes interviewed Crumb for Time in 2005 and, after admiring Crumb for having the same distaste for Andy Warhol, gets the master to focus in what it was like to see God, so to speak:

HUGHES: Is God going to look like Mr. Natural?

CRUMB: Nah. He has a white beard but he actually ended up looking more like my father. He has a very masculine face like my father. My problem was, how am I going to draw God? Should I just draw him as a light in the sky that has dialogue balloons coming out from it? Then I had this dream. God came to me in this dream, only for a split second, but I saw very clearly what he looked like. And I thought, ok, there it is, I’ve got God.

A look at Mysterius, The Unfathomable and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

The first issue of Mysterius, The Unfathomable hit the ground running and issue 2 indicates this series will maintain a steady clip through its six issue run with DC Comics‘s Wildstorm. It’s always exciting to discover a hot new title. When it’s put together by such creative guys as writer Jeff Parker (Marvel‘s Agents of Atlas) and artist Tom Fowler (DC‘s Green Arrow), so much the better.

The team is made up of a writer who draws and an artist who writes. As stated in a Newsarama interview with Jeff Parker and elaborated upon by Tom Fowler to the CBC, this project is a meeting of the minds. Among the influences for the creation of the series are episodes of The Prisoner, The Avengers and even House. But something that goes deeper is a certain literary character: Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, detective of the paranormal.

So, on one of those never-ending Sundays, which seem to afford time for everything, I decided to throw on a hoodie and some flip flops and find a cozy spot in my neighborhood cafe and take a closer look at issue two of Mysterius alongside a copy of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. It wasn’t long before I caught on to the vibe that attracts Parker and Fowler.

Dirk Gently. Mysterius. A quick and dirty comparison/contrast: Both men are highly eccentric, live well beyond their means and have a tendency to write bad checks. They are both in tune with the world in a hyper-analytical fashion, a saving grace, which keeps each of their heads above water. Dirk is no ladies man while Mysterius fancies himself to be one and has just enough looks and charm to back him up. Both characters are clueless until they focus and then they’re in their element, for the most part. (more…)

Compliments to USA Today Pop Candy’s Whitney Matheson (an absolute doll, by the way!) for posting the news of a rare copy of Action Comics #1 up for auction starting March 27th. Don’t expect to see that $1.00 starting list price to last very long, it’ll be moments upon the auction’s launch before it fetches six figures.

Good thing I got a tax return coming soon!

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)

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.
(more…)