If you like what’s you’ve read so far totally check out more super cute comics at:www.sosuperduper.com!

If you like what’s you’ve read so far totally check out more super cute comics at:www.sosuperduper.com!

The Deformitory

by Sophia Wiedeman

48 pages, 4 3/4″ x 7″,$8

www.sophiadraws.com

Are those claws on the girl on the cover of The Deformitory? No, far worse. And what’s a deformitory? Sophia Wiedeman takes us there in her book that recently won the Xeric grant, a source for self-publishing comics founded by Peter Laird, co-creator (with Kevin Eastman) of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Among Xeric grant winners, what sets Wiedeman within the sphere of rising stars is her agility as a storyteller, her willingness to tap into our common insecurities and turn them into fiction in refreshingly new and weird ways.

The book revolves around Delores, a Kafka-like city dweller stuck in the rut of working in an office. Instead of turning into a cockroach, her hands, overworked from typing, turn into claws, each literally with a mind of its own. These claws have faces and they can talk. With cute little eyes, they could pass for muppets.

Desperately lonely, Delores finds the bright side of things and instantly becomes friends with them, giving them names, Cornelius and Buster. It’s as if Kafa’s Gregor Samsa, upon awakening to find himself a cockroach, decides to enjoy being an insect. 

Delores loves hanging out with her new friends, getting lost in conversation on the subway, buying three lattes when she used to buy only one. Wiedeman’s delicate line work helps to beautifully sustain the story and evokes vulnerability. It reminds me of the work of Gabrielle Bell who taps into the surreal quality of life in the big city.

But being a misfit is not all fun and games. If Delores thought she had problems before, her new claws have further ostracized her from her normal routine. They’ve taken control too as they guide her to The Deformitory, a secluded place where they suggest she can find peace. It looks like a tower out of a fable and functions as a condo for freaks. It also functions as a plot device that allows us to see other poor souls like Delores. 

We get an overview of some of the tenants early in the book before we know who they are and it’s fun to see them as they weave their way through the story. There’s one subplot about a rivalry among mermaids which is very engaging. It speaks to the cruelty we all can easily inflict upon others and it’s done with a nice dose of dry wit. The slug at the end of this subplot, who bears the rejection from the ugliest of mermaids, returns home to the apartment she keeps with Delores. Both of them engage in some numb housemate pleasantries just as Delores leaves for a fateful date which will prove her undoing.   

It is during this date that the claws, the seemingly innocent Cornelius and Buster, show their true colors by attacking the young man Delores is having dinner with. The power to this tale resides in what happens between Delores and her claws so much so that I could see taking the risk of just telling the story between the three of them and the few characters directly related to it. Paring down to the essentials would add to that Twilight Zone vibe in the main plot. Nevertheless, The Deformitory is a very satisfying read and demonstrates the handiwork of a sly writer.

This is my first review with Newsarama and I look forward to many more. I am a cartoonist and writer with an interest in literary and art comics and pop culture in general. If you’d like your comic considered for review, feel free to contact me.

While I’ll take a more specific look at the Wonder Con schedule later today, it caught my eye that Blog@’s own Brian Andersen — creator of our serialized webcomic So Super Duper — will be speaking at the San Francisco con!

(This is Brian. Hear him roar.)

Brian will be one of a seven-person panel called “Self-Publishing Queer Comics.” If you’ve got an LGBT comics idea, this is definitely a panel to hit. Other panelists include Jane’s World creator Paige Braddock, Hard to Swallow’s Justin Hall, Andy Hardell of Monday fame, Gravity Faggot creator Johnny Nolen, and Sean Z, creator of Myth. The panel will take place at 2-3pm on Sunday, March 1st.

If you like what’s you’ve read so far totally check out more super cute comics at:www.sosuperduper.com!

If you like what’s you’ve read so far totally check out more super cute comics at:www.sosuperduper.com!

If you like what’s you’ve read so far totally check out more super cute comics at:www.sosuperduper.com!

If you like what’s you’ve read so far totally check out more super cute comics at:www.sosuperduper.com!

By Bon Alimagno

The last few weeks have brought upheaval to the comic book industry, ignited by changes in the distribution policies of Diamond Comics Distribution. A lot of the coverage portrayed this as the death of the indy comic and the exile of many publishers from the direct market. Harris Comics is uniquely positioned to weather this storm, entirely due to our dedicated fan base and a very strong online sales operation. For the rest of the industry the way I look at can be summed up by the saying, “One door closes, another opens.”

There were a lot of changes put in place, some big, some small, and a few won’t be noticed. There are two that will have far-reaching effects across the industry. One deals with limiting reorders of pamphlets past 60 days, a rule that greatly hinders the ability of comics to use word of mouth and good press to grow sales after initial publication. (Thankfully, this rule change was not applied to Harris’ most successful source of reorders: trade paperbacks.) Another essentially means that a $2.99 comic book must sell a minimum of roughly 2000 copies to receive distribution. (This threshold doesn’t affect Harris’ regular editions, but does greatly impact everything else we publish: limited editions, art prints, etc.)

I’m not sure if it has sunk into the mind of the average comic shop goer what setting these rules mean. The new rules place a huge emphasis on initial sales, in a direct market largely resistant to anything different and new. A year from now it’s very likely what few non-superhero comic books you are used to seeing at your local comic book shop may disappear unless you frequent one that already features a wide ranging selection. The direct market is a vicious cycle: comic book shops are widely considered the best place to buy superhero comics, so most of the people who frequent these shops are people who read superhero comic books. Retailers who order comic books do so on a non-returnable basis. They have to place their bet on what comic will and won’t sell. If they bet wrong they are stuck with extra inventory that may never move. More often than not they’ll place their bet with a sure thing, something with a consistent track record or built-in fan base. Retailers then order mostly superhero books. Anyone looking for anything else will more often than not find a very limited selection appealing to their tastes, so they stop coming, leaving the store increasingly in the hands of superhero comic book readers.

Non-Big Four publishers will often find their books under ordered. In cases like that, they’ll hope that word of mouth and positive reviews stir interest in their titles and lead to reorders. Except now reorders are limited to sixty days, not that much time to grow an audience.

I’ve read some people say these new rules place the burden of marketing a comic book more where it should be: with the publisher. True enough. Yet how many publishers have the marketing budget to do substantial publicity? (How many of these critics have ever seen a Wizard ad rate card?) And how many comics can receive attention in a market already oversaturated with news from the Big Four? (God help you if you debuted a comic the day Batman died AND President Obama appeared on the cover of Amazing Spider-Man.) For better or worse the few column inches granted each comic book in Previews may be the most cost effective advertising available to a publisher. And now even that will likely not be available to them.

That all sounds bleak for anyone who doesn’t have an X or a Bat on the comic book they publish. But really, this is an opportunity to refashion the direct market into one that serves not one genre but all subject matter. I don’t know how we’ll get to this promised land, but here’s what I think it’ll look like:

*A small subset of the current direct market, let’s say the 500 stores that already do order a variety of material, become the foundation for a new direct market. These stores will look more like Rocketship in Brooklyn, New York and Isotope and Comic Relief in San Francisco, California: more bookstore than hobby shop. These stores will attract a diverse audience, one willing to read an entire medium’s worth of stories, instead of limiting themselves to a single genre.

*Publishers cease trying to compete with Marvel and DC since they’re getting distributed to stores where they don’t have to. There’s less pressure to publish heavy stock, glossy, full color comic books that look collectible. They turn to thinner, cheaper stocks and much more black and white. Print costs decrease and the comics themselves are cheaper and never exceed $2.99.

*A distributor, maybe Haven, maybe one that doesn’t exist yet, serves these stores and these publishers more effectively than Diamond ever could. Diamond’s infrastructure is fashioned to move hundreds of thousands of Spider-Man issues around the country with ease, but dozens of Vampirella limited editions with difficulty. A distributor that serves this new direct market properly would be just the opposite: making it easier to distribute fewer copies and ending the need for minimums. Profit margins per item may be small, but due to volume add up to making it worth it – essentially a “long tail” method of distribution instead of one so heavily concentrated on initial orders.

The easiest answer to so many of the industry’s distribution problems is moving to a fully digital model, one that requires no distributor and no comic book stores. But something is missing here. I love walking into a comic book store and browsing through a jungle of shelves. At least once a year I go to Jim Hanley’s Universe because they seemingly order everything and I try to look at, well, everything. I am always surprised by something new I’d never seen before: a new voice, a new artist, even a new shape and size to the comic itself. What we’re facing is a direct market where the surprises grow fewer and far between, where what we see is a retread of everything that has come before. If this medium is to grow it can’t condemn itself to that. Marvel is right, we must “embrace change,” though we must make it our own.

Bon Alimagno is Director – Publishing & Editorial for Harris Comics, publishers of Vampirella.

If you like what’s you’ve read so far totally check out more super cute comics at:www.sosuperduper.com!

If you like what’s you’ve read so far totally check out more super cute comics at:www.sosuperduper.com!

As part of Blog@’s look at webcomics, may I direct your attention to Voids? Written and drawn by Shayna Marchese, Voids follows twentysomething Sara at the moment her life begins to tailspin into a very odd direction. Within the space of a week, she finds herself without any of the steady, constant things she’d moored herself to… and in scrambling to pick up the pieces, she finds herself surrounded by new people, with old connections and grudges. As Sara gets to know the situation better, it slowly unfolds before the readers’ eyes as well. Shayna Marchese tells us a little more:

Without giving too much away, what is Voids about?

SM: It’s really like most stories: It’s about friendship, relationships, not knowing what you’re doing with your life. The main character is sort of drifting along; she has no real job, no real home, no very strong ties to anyone. The characters are all in some way lost and look to different things try and feel less so. Frances needs to be in a relationship, Andrew drinks, Nika goes through men in order to feel in charge of something. The story is meandering in a way that hopefully will let readers “know” the characters by the end.

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If you like what’s you’ve read so far totally check out more super cute comics at:www.sosuperduper.com!

Hey all!  Blog@ begins serializing So Super Duper today!

So Super Duper by Brian Andersen: An Intro by J. Caleb Mozzocco

If you’ve been reading superhero comics for very long, chances are you’ve read some pretty gay stuff. But I’m pretty confident you’ve never read anything quite as gay as So Super Duper, writer/artist Brian Andersen’s ongoing adventures of Psyche, the least useful member of the premier super-team The Amazin’naughts.

Psyche’s an empath, which gives him the ability to read the emotions of others, allowing him to helpfully point to, say, a giant monster in the process of destroying the city and say, “Hey, that giant monster is totally evil!”

Psyche prances and he minces about; he squees and he squeals. His wrists are limp, his boots are light. He eschews a superhero cape in favor of a scarf. In short, he’s the most flaming superhero since Johnny Storm.

But is he actually gay? Like, a homosexual gay? Like, guy who likes guys instead of gals gay? He certainly fits all the stereotypes, and his co-workers all seem to think he is, but both he and his best gal pal, who secretly longs for him, are completely oblivious.

While that may be the central conflict of Andersen’s story, “conflict” seems like a pretty strong word for such a light book. Anderson approaches his storytelling like something between a comic strip and a sitcom, devoting time equally to Psyche’s conflicts with the frosty queen bee of the team, his relationship with his totally platonic best friend, his struggle to prove his worth to all the heroes with more combat-ready powers than super-empathy and the conflict between people’s expectations of what is gay and what is straight and what the reality of gayness and straightness is, all told in little character sketches that vacillate melodramatic soap opera and character-based comedy. Oh, and there’s superheroes and supervillains punching each other and blasting each other with superpowers, because this is a superhero comic.

But hey, you’ll see all that for yourself soon enough, as Blog@ begins serialization of Anderson’s So Super Duper. I’m just here to let you know that you’re in for a fun ride with an especially effervescent character unlike any other superhero you’ve ever met.

Now go say “HIEeeeeeeee!” to Psyche; I’m sure he’ll be like so totally excited to meet you…

This is the only thing that would make me want to see The Sound of Music again:

Julie Andrews vs. Nazi Vampires! Somebody get Michael Bay on the phone and tell him to stop working on that new A Nightmare on Elm Street remake and get to work on this film right away.

For more awesome pieces of art like this, go check out Jim Rugg’s website and livejournal, where the Street Angel artist regularly posts new works.

Hello All!

Holly Golightly here…or Holly G! I like both… Miss Holly is okay too. Troy has so generously extended an invitation to blog here at Newsarama!

How groovy is that?

Well just so ya know – I’m VP/creator at Jim Balent’s (my hubby) BroadSword Comics… I’ve done pencils, inks, colours and more for other companies, and still do – but most happiest workin’ just for us!

I thought I’d share what’s comin’ out of our studio this year.

Tarot, Witch of the Black Rose, will turn 9 years old on March 2009! So of course we celebrate with a limited edition Photo Cover.

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Radical Publishing has announced a bevy of talent that will be at their table during the New York Comic Con.

The first-time attendee has said that its roster of sequential artists — including the legendary Jim Steranko (NICK FURY: AGENT OF SHIELD), Arthur Suydam (MARVEL ZOMBIES), Steve Niles (30 DAYS OF NIGHT), David Hine (SPAWN), Rick Remender (PUNISHER: WAR JOURNAL), Steve Pugh (ANIMAL MAN), and Sam Sarkar (Beverly Hills 90210) — will be signing work throughout the Feb. 6-8th event.

In addition, Radical’s Dream Team will be hosting a panel at 5:15-6:15pm Saturday, in which they will discuss their newest titles. Following the panel, there will be a special drawing where winners will receive a signed poster from one of the creators.

“This is a really exciting time for the company right now,” said Barry Levine, Radical Publishing’s President and Publisher, in a press release . “We have a great lineup of new titles involving our guests to introduce at the show, along with a very special surprise announcement to be made at our panel. This is a great opportunity for fans to meet us, to see our complete library of titles and what we have in store for 2009.”

Among Radical’s lineup is Steranko’s Hercules: Knives of Kush, Suydam’s Cholly and Flytrap: Hush City, Hine’s FZVA: Federal Zombie and Vampire Agency, Niles’ City of Dust: A Philip Khrome Story, Remender’s The Last Days of American Crime, Sarkar’s Caliber: First Cannon of Justice, and Pugh and Warren Ellis’ Hotwire: Requiem for the Dead.

By Filip Sablik, Publisher of Top Cow Productions, Inc.

I love ice cream. It’s one of my many vices and I’m cool with that. Chocolate and vanilla are old standbys because they pair well with just about anything. Pie? Good. Cake? Good. Cookies? Good. Bananas, nuts, and candy? Good. A nice filet mignon? Probably not, but I’d be willing to try it.

As much as those two flavors are standbys and consistently the most popular flavors in surveys, I do love to experiment with different flavors. Hit me with some Peanut Butter Cup, Mint Chocolate Chip, Cookies & Cream, Rocky Road, or any number of more unique combinations and I’m a happy man. What does this have to do with comics?

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen a bunch of “Best” lists online for top picks of comics and graphic novels for 2008 and couldn’t help but notice how heavily dominated they are by Big Two books. When I scan the list of top-selling books from Diamond each month on ICv2, I can’t help but notice the lack of what I would call independent titles.  In the top 25 comics last month, there was only one non-Marvel, non-DC title – Buffy, The Vampire Slayer – an excellent read, but a licensed property with its roots in television. In the top 50, only two others – Angel (same boat as Buffy) and The Umbrella Academy. The Umbrella Academy gives me a little bit of hope, because it’s a fantastic, unique comic that doesn’t rely on a pre-established licensed property, but that’s only one out of 50! The top 100 looks a bit better, but only slightly so with the addition of The Walking Dead, Spawn, Conan the Cimmerian (licensed again) and Black Terror from Dynamite Entertainment.

Then reading John Mayo’s monthly report of sales through Diamond, I came across this chilling statement – “the total units sold for the top 300 comics was down by an estimated 1,763,925 units from October 2008 and down 1,185,793 from November 2007.” As John explains, the reason for this significant sales hit is because a number of high-profile titles from Marvel and DC Comics did not ship in those two months.

Back to my ice cream analogy so we can bring this blog entry full circle. Marvel and DC are our vanilla and chocolate. I say “our” because they’re mine as well, I love the characters and the stories these companies produce. But the pure domination of the market concerns me both as a fan of independent and original comics and as a publisher of the same said comics. It bugs me when I see a second or third-tier superhero character outselling a unique, critically acclaimed title like The Goon, Mouse Guard, Firebreather or Pax Romana.

Using November as an example again, Marvel had almost 43% of the total units sold to comic shops and DC had 35%. The percentages by which vanilla and chocolate are favorite flavors? According to the International Ice Cream Association, 29% prefer vanilla and less than 9% prefer chocolate. Independent comic publishers fight over 22% of the market, while other ice cream flavors compete for 62% of your taste buds. I think the latter makes for a much richer market place overall.

What do you think?

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 just officially entered his thirties. 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.

CBG Comics has announced that it will print Trina Robbins’ indie series “California Girls” as a trade paperback.

The eight-issue black-and-white series, originally printed in the 1980s, starred an all-female cast and spotlighted the adventures of twins Max and Mo.

This collection not only includes the original issues, but will include paper dolls, reader-submitted fashions, as well as artistic work by the late Barb Rausch.

CBG plans on releasing the trade at the San Francisco Wonder Con on Feb. 27-Mar. 1 at Trina Robbins’ table, the Prism Comics table, as well as on their main web site at sosuperduper.com.

CBG Comics prints titles including So Super Duper, Reignbow & Dee-Va, and Unabashedly Billie.

Apparently some enterprising student filmmakers decided to shoot a story from Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan’s DEMO. The results wound up on YouTube, and are kind of hilarious.

For those of you who haven’t read DEMO (get to it!), it’s a series of done-in-one short stories about young people. Many of the stories revolved around a superpower, but this particular one did not. It’s just the story of a young couple breaking up.

Watching comics get translated to film is always interesting and spawns nitpicking,  but this one made me think in particular about the pacing and timing of comics. The story on the page reads slowly, calmly, unfolding like the wreckage of a failed relationship before your eyes, with Becky Cloonan’s stark black and white drawings keeping it simple yet capturing each bit of emotion. And like most writers that started off as artists, Brian Wood knows how to get out of Cloonan’s way and let her draw.

Yet this version seems so rushed, and reads the characters differently than I did. Still, it’s fun to watch.