What makes a hit comic? In a thread over at Millarworld, Mark Millar tries to explain:

A book needs 2 of 3 things to sell in the direct market… a big writer, a big artist and a big character. 3 is better but to really do well you need at least 2. This is why the Millarworld books sell so well every month as they’re aimed at established readers. Trade sales are more mainstream and so the artist doesn’t need to have established himself at Marvel or DC.

It’s an interesting thread overall, if only for the glimpse inside Millar’s take on how to promote your books and your brand:

Like Marvel, I also embraced a multimedia approach and quickly got them going as movies, T-shirts, games, toys and had the success of those bring heat to the new projects… I’ve timed this carefully. Not just building a rep on company-owned, but I think the cycle at the moment is people wanting fresh concepts like they wanted them in 1992. There’s only so many times a villain can come back in the old books. The Millarworld books so far show the audience and multimedia potential is unlimited. A lot of people really hadn’t gotten what I’ve been doing here, but they’re starting to see it now. All going well we’ll have 2 or more movies a year coming out by 2013 and beyond.

Millar also promises that he will continue to be the center of his own brand:

I’ll never bring in other writers. That’s the huge mistake Image made when they expanded too fast in 93/94 and collapsed their model. People knew picking up an Image book meant they were getting one of their fave Marvel artists, but when other guys were writing and drawing those books they diluted their appeal. I’d rather write 3 volumes of Kick-Ass and have them permanently in print with movies, TV shows, games, etc, than have someone come in and dilute what makes it work.

Say what you like about Millar, he’s maintained a level of success from the Marvel work that made his name through to his own creator-owned work, so he’s clearly doing something right…

Looking at the top 10 graphic novels of last year is a fascinating peek at an alternative comic-reading audience to the direct market single issue one we’re all more familiar with: Six volumes of Walking Dead? And what’s interesting is seeing that it’s the three most recent volumes and the first three, suggesting two different sizable groups – Clearly, the AMC show is bringing in newcomers to the comic itself, which is great. Also, note the almost complete lack of superheroes, with the exception of the OGN Batman: Noel; is this a sign that superhero readers prefer the single issue format, perhaps? (Also, clearly there’s an audience out there for superhero OGNs, too; I wonder if next year’s chart will feature appearances by Marvel’s various Season One books?)

What’s worth remembering is that this is just the Diamond book chart – Publishers also use other distributors, so this is a potentially misleading idea of where the book market actually is. Don’t both DC and Marvel have additional distribution outside of the direct market? I wonder if that information would significantly change the idea of what sells and what doesn’t? I guess we’ll have to wait until the Bookscan numbers for the year get revealed.

The news that Hostess is to file for bankruptcy should send nostalgic shivers down the spines of superheroes worldwide, given the multiple crimes the company’s snack foods helped prevent in the 1970s and ’80s; from 1975 through 1982, ads for Hostess Fruit Pies, Twinkies and other products appeared in both Marvel and DC comics, each one an original one-page strip featuring a superhero from that publisher’s stable using the “tasty snack” of choice to distract criminals, monsters and other ne’er-do-wells from destruction, thievery and other unfortunate rampages against society. For those who haven’t seen them, the strips were variations on a theme, all written to the same basic formula but weirdly enjoyable for that very reason, reducing characters to stereotype and snack-obsessed mindsets; there’s a selection available here for you to sample them for yourself. Of course, for those of us who grew up reading these strips, the very name “Hostess” has a very specific nostalgia, not so much for the snacks themselves, but the ads, and the kinds of comics that they appeared in. Remember when comic book ads weren’t just for more comics and the occasional movie or TV show…?

I missed this post by Brian Wood at the end of last year, but he’s possibly noticed a quiet trend for 2012 comics: Food comics. Wood talks about Ryan Kelly’s upcoming food-centric webcomic Cocotte and mentions that he had pitched his own food comic to Vertigo earlier:

My own culinary series, called STARVE, is something of a casualty.  Created for Vertigo almost two years ago, it hit too many of the same notes as that Anthony Bourdain book they got going on, and so it was ultimately not approved.  Another publisher, an indie one, also passed for similar reasons.  I guess there is a real glut of food comics coming.  STARVE now sits in limbo.

The Bourdain comic is, for those who don’t know, Get Jiro, the graphic novel co-written by the celebrity chef/writer (with novelist Joel Rose) and drawn by Langdon Foss that’s due this year. But I feel like this food comic trend, if it’s real, has been en route for some time; in addition to the various food manga that’s been around for awhile now, haven’t recipes been showing up in Scott Pilgrim and King City in the last couple of years…? Clearly, this has been a slowly building zeitgeist. What’s next? Mixology comics?

2011 has, as I’ve said before, been a very odd year for comics – One that saw DC Comics change their game up with apparently successful results, the rise of digital comics (with all the nervousness and uncertainty that that entailed) and Marvel go through what feels more and more like a modern-day version of the DC Implosion of yore. But, most importantly, it’s been a year full of really, really good comics, no matter your tastes. I’ve written about some favorites elsewhere, but I’m curious: What comics have been your favorites of the year – and which ones do you think have been unfairly overlooked?

I’ll offer a suggestion for the latter: I’ve been loving IDW’s Dungeons and Dragons all year – I think it’s one of the most-well-written team books available, with John Rogers continually coming up with smart, funny dialogue and well-paced plots. I’m always kind of surprised that more people aren’t talking about it. But what do you think? What 2011 books should’ve been talked about more, and why?

…well, if you can raise $679,000.

The long-running comic book store, located on Melrose and La Brea in Los Angeles, has put itself on sale — on eBay. It’s been a Hollywood fixture since 1979, and now you can select the celebrity-frequented shop with the “Add to cart” option. We live in interesting times.

According to a Bleeding Cool report, the sale isn’t an indication of any negative performance on the store’s part, but rather the inclination for the Liebowitz family to pursue other opportunities. Store founder Bill Liebowitz passed away in 2004 at the age of 63, leaving the business to his surviving family.

Our pick for a potential buyer? Nicolas Cage. A whole store for $679k seems like a bargain compared to $1.55 million for one comic, right?

Maybe it’s just me, but the day after Christmas – Boxing Day for me, because I come from Britain which still remembers to call it that – is always a weird mix of comedown, letdown and relaxation. No wonder, then, that I’ve found myself thinking about all the various Aftermath comics of yore. You know the ones: They come out after a big event comic, and deal with all the fallout, either putting the toys back in the box carefully (The three Fear Itself epilogues from Marvel), trying to come up with new toys to play with (The Final Crisis Aftermath minis from DC) or exploring the landscape left by what had come before (Marvel’s Civil War: The Conversation or Secret Invasion:Dark Reign).

I’m always kind of amused by these types of books, because they feel like after-the-fact efforts to emphasize the importance of the event book they’re epiloguing, instead of anything in their own right (“What just happened was so important that we needed more comics to tell you how important is was!”). They also, for me at least, feel somewhat weightless by themselves, and therefore throwaway. Am I being too harsh? I’m not arguing that big stories shouldn’t have impact, or leave some kind of aftermath, but I feel as if that aftermath should be dealt with in the regular series of the characters that starred in the events, I guess (Secret Wars, for example, with its “Spider-Man has a new costume! She-Hulk has joined the Fantastic Four” endings… and startings, really, considering the publishing timeline), instead of being shunted off into the Aftermath book ghetto.

Am I being too harsh? Are there fans out there of the special issues that underscore the dramatic importance of what went before? Should I stop thinking about all of this, and get back to eggnog and mince pies…? Probably that last one, really…

If it’s wrong to be as excited about the prospect of Stuart Moore’s prose version of Civil War as I am, then I don’t want to be right. Prose adaptations of comics have long fascinated me, if only for their seeming lack of reason to exist (Are there really that many people out there thinking “I wish I could read Kingdom Come, but I far prefer my Superman stories to be in prose as I cannot stand comic books”?). I’ve long been tempted by Greg Cox’ Final Crisis adaptation (He also wrote prose versions of Infinite Crisis, 52 and Countdown to Final Crisis), if only to see just how he manages to build something resembling a coherent prose narrative out of a series that seemed as much an attempt to break traditional comic narrative storytelling as anything else, for example, and I’ll happily admit to believing that Greg Rucka’s Batman: No Man’s Land is far, far more enjoyable to me than the never-ending comic book version of the story.

I could be wrong – And, if I am, I have no doubt that you’ll let me know in the comments – but Civil War might be the first time that a Marvel storyline has been adapted into prose, as far as I can remember. There have been plenty of Marvel superhero prose releases before (Who can forget Star Trek: The Next Generation/X-Men: Planet X?), but they were all original storylines, I think. Moving the “real” Marvel U storylines into prose is a smart idea, though, making today’s comic continuity more easily accessible for newcomers (“Read the prose book” is much easier for newcomers looking to catch up on their backstory than “Read the several hardcover collections, or maybe the twenty-odd paperback collections, some of which are out of print,” after all) while also franchising the characters into a whole new medium for movie fans looking for more from the Avengers characters. Moore revealed on Twitter that he’s also going to be editing future prose adaptations for Marvel, so I hope the line is a success. I really like Moore, and hope this is a hit for him.

There’s a great thread over at the CBR forums where fans list the unresolved plots in Marvel comics that they wish we could get some closure to, including some that I completely agree with (Hi, Silent War! Hello, Xorn in general!). Loose ends and stories that never quite work out the way they were supposed to are just one of those things that happen with serialized fiction, especially serialized fiction handled by multiple creators, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not frustrating when a plot you’re enjoying suddenly ends up cut short and never mentioned again for whatever reason.

It’s obviously not just Marvel that suffers from this; twenty-odd years – and at least one universe-wide reboot – after the series was canceled, I still wish someone would pick up the “John Stewart is a Guardian now” plot from Green Lantern: Mosaic. Sticking with Green Lantern, I wonder what, if anything, was ever planned for Lord Malvolio from the Action Comics Weekly run. There were all manner of plots hinted at at the end of Flash: Rebirth that never got picked up, more recently (The Gorilla City cave paintings, Wally’s kids, etc.) and the various multiple threads abandoned as a result of the New 52 replacing the old DCU and pulling some characters out of continuity altogether.

Of course, at least the Marvel and DC characters get to survive, or have the chance of surviving – Think about all of the truncated stories from series or entire publishers that disappeared, never to be seen again (or, at least, not in that specific incarnation): Pity the poor fans of the !mpact line from the early 1990s – the various revivals really haven’t been the same – or Eclipse or First’s characters (Not forgetting, of course, the quasi-legendary Miracleman) or any of the many, many others throughout the years. The idea of the comics limbo as seen in Grant Morrison’s Animal Man all those years ago comes to mind, when imagining all the stories and characters left incomplete out there. If you could grab one to magically bring to completion, which would it be? And why?

If you’re a budding comic creator – or just as in love with podcasts as I am – then you might want to give a listen to the new Making Comics podcast hosted by iFanboy’s Josh Flanagan and Comics Experience‘s Andy Schmidt (who’s also a former Marvel and IDW editor). As Josh explains,

We’ll be talking about many aspects of the art and industry, lending all the experience and knowledge we (mostly him) can come up with. Whether you’re a writer, artist, writer/artist, colorist, or just someone who appreciates the craft, we hope there will be something for you, and if your dream is to make comics, that you find yourself one step closer to it.

The first episode, on writing comics, is already available, with new episodes due weekly.

One of the things that I enjoyed about Defenders #1 yesterday – because I am a wonk that way – was this:

“This” being the return of the ad taglines on the bottom of certain pages. This isn’t the first time this old Marvel practice from the 1970s has been revived in recent memory; way back in… 2008, I think? Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley did it in Mighty Avengers #10, except they used actual examples from the 1970s: (more…)

Over at design website Core77, Dave Seliger lists what he thinks are the Seven Graphic Novels Every Designer Should Know:

When you’re at the next design firm holiday party and your co-workers are rambling on about the “complex psychological profiles” of the characters in Watchmen, you can speak up about the hottest graphic novel you just read (as recommended by the Core77 clogger team).

The choices are interesting – Akira, 100% by Paul Pope and the original two-color run of Casanova are all in there – but, of course, what sticks out for me are the books that didn’t make the list: No King City? No Parker? Of course, this kind of list exists for people to ask “But what about [Book X]?”, but it does make me wonder what books I’d put on this kind of list, and why (I mean, there has to be some Kirby on there, right? And something from Brendan McCarthy…). Hmm…  What graphic novels/comics do you think deserve to be on any designers’ must-see list?

Thinking about the end of Fear Itself, I end up wondering about the role of superhero death these days. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that there’s another death in #7 – The solicit has talked about “another hero falling” or something similar, right? – but, like the death of Bucky in #3, it’s entirely unconvincing; you end up thinking “Wait, is that it?” and “They’ll be back in a few months” simultaneously, and that seems to be a problem. Actually, the problem for Marvel is the same one that DC had, as underlined by Blackest Night: All of their major characters had “died” and come back from the dead. (more…)

The news of the revival of Rob Liefeld’s Extreme Comics line – or Awesome Comics, if you remember that extremely short-lived revival around the turn of the century – has got me to thinking: What other defunct lines are left to bring back? This year, in addition to Extreme, we’ve seen announcements of the return of First Comics, Archie’s Red Circle characters (again!) and Valiant, as well as an actual, published, revival of Crossgen, via Marvel (Last year saw Dark Horse revive the Gold Key characters with the help of Jim Shooter, of course). So who’s left? The Malibu Ultraverse, of course, but Marvel has been claiming that that’s impossible due to mysterious contractual issues for some time now. Miracleman? Well, Marvel’s also working on that.

With IDW, Dynamite and Dark Horse all actively working to revive or reprint as many other familiar brands as possible, I find myself wondering: What are the remaining previously-successful comic brands or lines out there that aren’t in some stage or another or revival? What do people want to see again, and yet don’t seem to stand a chance just yet?

Marc Bernardin is the new ongoing writer of Static Shock starting with issue #7, currently due March 2012, DC announced this morning on The Source. Scott McDaniel, the current artist on the book, is sticking around with the new scribe.

John Rozum launched the book as part of the DC New 52 initiative, and had the distinction of being the first creative change for the line-up, resigning from the title just one week after the first issue was released.

Bernardin has extensive credits in TV and comics, having previously written The Authority for DC under the now-defunct WildStorm banner. Currently, he writes for SyFy’s Alphas. On the Source, he had this to say about the new gig:

“The thing that excites me, as both a writer and a reader, about STATIC SHOCK is that it features a hero that we don’t really know yet — at least, in comics, anyway. (Fans of the Static Shock TV show will kindly forgive me.) Virgil Hawkins is young, still figuring out the full extent of his powers, and navigating the full range of teenage tragedies: Being the new kid in a new school, asking out the pretty girl, finding time for his homework, etc. And he’s one of the few young heroes without a built-in father figure: He’s not an offshoot of Batman, Green Lantern, Flash, Wonder Woman, or the Martian Manhunter. He’s his own man, for better or for worse. And all of that offers a lot of grist for the writer-y mill. And I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t feel a humbling sense of responsibility to get this one right. The late Dwayne McDuffie still stands as a titan in this industry – and while I’m not so presumptuous as to think I can write Static as well as he did, I’m hoping I can write a Static he’d get a chuckle out of.”

Mark Millar would like you to know that he loves comics, and that movie adaptations are just an added benefit:

I’ve been very lucky to have my books picked up as movies as often as they have. Like Stan Lee and Stephen King, I’ve got a very fortunate track record in these things and a particular bunch of story ideas that execs seem to like. I see nothing to be ashamed of in this. In fact, I see it as a massive, massive boon. Creator-owned projects used to be done as side gigs, creators working at Marvel or DC doing projects they often didn’t like to pay the bills while their real labour of love didn’t really bring them in enough cash to live on. The Hollywood options and adaptations have meant that, like a couple of friends before me, I’ve been able to strike out on my own and afford to do my own thing. As a comic book creator that’s everything I’ve ever wanted. Jack Kirby, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster would have KILLED for the opportunities we have right now, where a creator-owned book like Kick-Ass can outsell established characters and the writer and artist get to keep all the rights and all the money. This is a GOOD thing.

He’s writing in response to this article at IGN, which is based around a theory that comics becoming optioned while still mid-publication (or even pre-publication, in some cases) is “doing a disservice to the medium and the potential it offers.” (more…)

I admit, I pretty much missed out on the Marv Wolfman and George Perez New Teen Titans run the first time around; I was too young, too non-American (For some reason, I don’t think I ever saw an issue of NTT in a store until it had become Tales of The New Teen Titans and moved on to the Eduardo Barreto days), and too into reading Justice League of America, anyway. Surprisingly, there’s never really been an affordable series of collections of the run, either, so it’s taken me until now to read the Archives of the earliest issues and trades of later arcs, and… I just don’t get it.

That’s not to say I think it’s bad, because I don’t. But, reading things like The Terror of Trigon, I feel as if I’m missing something, and I’m not sure what. I don’t think this is just limited to me, or to New Teen Titans; I have a friend who didn’t read Walt Simonson’s run on Thor until earlier this year when the gigantic omnibus came out, and he didn’t see what all the fuss was about (Despite it clearly being the best Thor run since Lee and Kirby, I mean, come on). There are classic runs and era-defining comics that seem to be as much about the context they were created in as the comics themselves, and reading them later, without any sense of nostalgia… Well, it’s just not the same.

I’m curious; am I wrong about New Teen Titans? Should I go all in and get the omnibus and try for a full immersion to hopefully understand it once more? And also, what classics have you sampled and ended up shaking your head in confusion over what everyone else saw so clearly that you failed to…?

Yesterday was Aquaman’s 70th birthday, a huge achievement for a character that has often lacked definition, and at some times been a laughing stock.

To celebrate the character’s birthday, fansite Aquaman Shrine threw a big old birthday party for Arthur, bringing along some big names and notable friends.

They have writers like Dan Abnett and Tony Bedard. They have the voice of Aquaman from Superfriends. Dan DiDio, Patrick Gleason, and many more contributed to say Happy Birthday to the King of Seas, and show why the character should be celebrated.

Of course, that’s not all for Aquaman this week, as he also gets a brand new #1 issue of an ongoing series, from writer Geoff Johns and artist Ivan Reis!

So pop on over to our friends at Aquaman Shrine and add your best wishes!

With the release of this week’s New 52 titles from DC, we’ve seen an explosion of contempt from readers in response to two titles – Judd Winick and Guillem March’s Catwoman #1 and Scott Lobdell and Kenneth Rocafort’s Red Hood and the Outlaws #1. If for some reason you’ve managed to avoid the controversy thus far, Blog@’s Graeme McMillan covered it here, Comic Alliance’s Laura Hudson very eloquently here and we also posted a response from Judd Winick here. That being said, while these two titles caused a great deal of anger, there were others that proved you can still make superheroines sexy without sexually degrading them.

This image shows our introduction to two members of the new Birds of Prey, Starling and Black Canary. Starling has cleavage showing but her breasts are an appropriate size and her top fits her correctly. Saiz gave both characters very feminine curves and form-fitting costumes yet neither are depicted as overt sex objects. On the other hand…

…this is the first impression we get of Catwoman and Starfire, the ones getting the most negative attention. And with good reason. Catwoman’s breasts are the center of attention in her introduction while Starfire’s entire body is on display. Neither woman is really getting the support they’d need for breasts that size either. Regardless, their bodies are the point of focus, not the characters themselves.

While some may still question why Wonder Woman needs to sleep naked, Cliff Chiang’s art in her first issue gives us a titilating image but not one that puts the character in an overt sexual situation. This panel is actually the second frame of Wonder Woman, the first is showing her back in bed, but neither has the sheets forming to her body in such a way that you can see her body parts. Wonder Woman may be needlessly sexualized here but in my opinion, this image is not being used to degrade the character.

Another image that stands out positively to me in Birds of Prey is this one of Black Canary fighting a villain. Another artist could have easily changed her position to be straddling the bad guy (something we’ve seen quite often) but instead, Saiz merely shows her apprehending him.

I’m far from a prude and I love the Batman/Catwoman relationship a great deal but this final image of the characters from Catwoman #1 is, as many have suggested, closer to fan fiction than mainstream comics.

Is art subjective? Absolutely. Some are arguing Batman and Catwoman are literally having sex in this last image but I’d argue they aren’t because both of their costume bottoms are still on (and I have yet to see a crotch zipper in any art [dear god help us they may not be far off]). But is it graphic and implied? Yes, without a doubt. I don’t have a problem with these characters having sex, in fact, I don’t have as big a problem with the last page of Catwoman as I have with the first or the entirety of Red Hood, but knowing that the same point can be made in a less overt way just makes the exploitive art scream exploitive.

Men already buy your books, DC. You don’t have to put giant breasts in their face to get them to pick them up but you will get more women to buy your comics if you don’t. So what is it you’re actually trying to tell us?

Digital comics distributor Graphicly has joined forces with Facebook to make instant access to comics even easier.

“Who isn’t on Facebook?” Graphicly asked via their blog.  ”At Graphicly, as we built out the social features of our application, we realized that there is an amazing amount of conversations occurring on Facebook around comics and creators. What was missing? The comic books themselves!”

With that, the company has launched Graphicly on Facebook. The application allows creators and publishers to embed a comic book or graphic novel onto any Facebook Page. “This simple application can enable any creator or publisher to provide their comics (either the complete book, or just a preview) and make it even easier to buy and read comics, all from their Facebook Page,” says Graphicly.

Graphicly is already integrated into sites like Newsarama, ComicVine and iFanboy but this is a huge step towards spreading comics more easily to the masses since people share everything else on Facebook already.  Graphically says the app is now being used by Archaia, Top Cow, Red5 Comics and more than 50 other creators and publishers across the web. Here’s what it looks like on Archaia’s Facebook page.

What are your thoughts about being able to purchase your digital comics while surfing on Facebook? Or, if you don’t buy digital, do you think you might be tempted now that it will likely be right in front of you?