For Kirby fanatics like me, this Kickstarter is unmissable:

Hello everyone, I am Jeremy Kirby, Jack Kirby’s grandson.  Years ago (1997 to be exact) I wrote a screenplay and shared it with my grandmother.  She did what every grandmother would do after reading her grandson’s story and told me how wonderful it was.  But then she stopped for a moment as if pausing to think.  She had me wait where I was and I saw her go into her closet.  She reached into a box that was on a shelf and pulled out a dusty old folder.  She handed it to me and said “your grandfather would have wanted you to have this.”  It was a play that he had written.  I have since showed the play to friends of the family and not one had ever heard of its existence.

My grandfather had kept the play to himself for all those years and it is time for it to be brought forth so everyone can enjoy it.  This, combined with hundreds of never-before-seen photographs and personal art from Jack’s early years through the 1980′s, is a dream that I would like to see come to fruition.

I would like this to be a coffee table sized book reprinting the play in its undisturbed state as well as full color photographs and art.

The play is called “Frog Prince.” That this isn’t fully-funded yet – It only needs $7,500 – is an oversight, world. It’s a previously unknown Kirby work! How exciting is that?

(Thanks, Sean)

I’d fallen behind on everything that’s being offered at Thrillbent recently, which was a mistake considering the new material that’s joined Mark Waid and Peter Krause’s Insufferable in recent weeks. Being a Leverage and Dungeons & Dragons fan (The IDW series of the same name for the latter, sadly; start talking to me about 20-sided die and I’ll just have to nod politely and shamefully admit that I’m lost), it’s no surprise that Arcanum is a particular favorite standing out for me amongst the new strips, thanks to the presence of writer John Rogers. As is his wont – as listeners of the Leverage 10 podcast or readers of Rogers’ Kung-Fu Monkey know – he’s not only writing the new magic invasion series, but writing about the series, spilling beans and lifting the curtain on some of the thinking behind it to give the rest of us a peek. Here’s Rogers selling the series in one simple paragraph:

If anything even vaguely resembling alien tech were discovered, you’d see the US government immediately put two programs in play: 1.) a Manhattan project to unravel the broken physics of said tech and 2.) a secret military/intelligence agency to keep tabs on it. Just substitute “magic” into those sentences and you have Arcanum.

You can find those process blog posts here and the actual Arcanum comic here. Both are recommended.

This mock ad (described as “but a daydream wish”), from Marvel Comics The Untold Story author Sean Howe, seemed appropriate given earlier thoughts today:

Always worth linking: You can find the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund here, and the Hero Initiative here.

Reed Tucker has a plan to save the comic book industry, it seems:

The big-two publishers at this point should take a hard, honest look at themselves in the mirror and realize what they are: caretakers of trademarked characters owned by big corporations. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. These characters have long histories and massive name recognition around the world, and there are plenty of creative types out there who’d cut off their penciling hand to work on them. That’s the one major advantage DC and Marvel have over the other publishing houses, besides upfront money to talent.

There’s no point in the publishing giants wasting time and energy trying to launch new characters and new-concept series at this point only to cancel them in six months. (Vibe, anyone?) That part of the market is now better served by Image and other boutique publishers. And what writer or artist, in the age of the creators’ rights movement, wants to hand over a new character or concept that he won’t own?

In total, his suggestions (which are all for Marvel and DC) are:

1. Publish less comics
2. Cut all comics to $1.99 in price
3. Focus on individual titles, not crossovers
4. Don’t create new characters, but stick to established properties

While none of these – with, perhaps, the exception of the last one – are bad ideas, per se (Really, is anyone really convinced that the DCU line has to have 52 titles in it?), I remain unconvinced that any of them are necessarily realistic in today’s market, never mind likely to save the industry…

The great Judge Minty fan film – inspired by 2000AD‘s long-running Judge Dredd strip, unsurprisingly – is now online in its entirety, and it’s well worth watching:

You can find out more about the movie here, but it’s worth pointing out that not only was the movie made with the permission of 2000AD owners Rebellion, but it was also co-written by Michael Carroll, who’s one of the team of Dredd writers on the weekly strip these days. Which is to say, this is a pretty authentic “fan film,” all told.

I smiled, I admit, when I saw this on Twitter from former Comics Alliance editor Caleb Goellner:

Here’s the thing: Task Force Rad Squad, a comic that pretty much does for Power Rangers what Jeffrey Brown’s Incredible Change-Bots does for Transformers, is kind of amazing. I’ve maybe seen two episodes of Power Rangers at most – and the majority of that time was likely spent going “What is this? What is this?” over and over again – so it’s not even as if I’m the target audience, but nonetheless, the skew-wiff charm and humor of the thing works even if you end up thinking of it as a messed-up Forever People reboot meets Voltron, as I did. It’s just weirdly, overwhelmingly awesome.

Caleb writes TFRS, with Buster Moody and Ryan Hill providing art; he also writes and draws the even-more surreal (and just as enjoyable) Mermaid Evolution. As sad as Comics Alliance’s closure is, if it means he’ll have more time to create comics as a result, it’s one good thing to come out of the whole sordid affair.

Task Force Rad Squad is available for download online on a pay-what-you-want system. You really, really should go download it already.

Zack Smith of this very parish creates the first funny “Angry Hitler” video in some time in response to yesterday’s news about the closure of Comics Alliance (Warning: NSFW language in the subtitles).

Of particular amusement to me: The DC/AOL joke. That people were seriously suggesting that could’ve been a thing yesterday blew my mind.

This is the cover art for this week’s prog of 2000AD, by the wonderful D’Israeli:

Look at the linework! The texture! The composition! And then, look at how the cover went from editorial brief to completion in this detailed blog post (with video) from the always-worth-reading 2000AD Covers Uncovered blog.

And speaking of excellent comics – as we just were, with the Daredevil post – it’s worth pointing out that 2000AD is yet again just great stuff from start to finish these days, and well worth checking out. If you’re in the US, it’s available digitally.

Over at the Beat, Steve Morris asks an unexpected question: Are people bored by the consistently excellent quality of Waid and Samnee’s Daredevil?

Daredevil hasn’t had as much attention this year as it did during it’s first, but that’s for a fairly clear reason – it’s utterly rock-solid. Reviewers get bored of saying “yep, still great” every month, which is why books like Fatale and Daredevil tend to experience a little critical fatigue the longer they go on. I’d argue that Daredevil does suffer a little from being so dependable – with readers already aware of what kind of experience they’re in for when they pick up an issue, there’s little sense of recklessness at stake here. With a comic which rolls from being good-to-great, there are more errors and slips in the work, and that can make for a more entertaining read than something which never puts a foot wrong.

He decides, finally, that “[r]ather than getting bored at seeing high quality on a regular basis, this is a book we should continue to champion, even 25 issues in.” I’m not sure if anyone actually is bored by the book; I think that it’s just that people are writing about it less because we’re almost two years into a consistently solid run and so the novelty value has moved on to different, newer material. Not that two years is the benchmark; I feel that we’ve already stopped talking about Hawkeye and Young Avengers, two other top-level books over at Marvel right now, and they’re both less than a year old. Maybe people would rather complain than cheer about their reading, depressingly.

I’m unsure quite what to make of the news that Dark Horse has added Dynamite’s line to its proprietary digital comics service. On Dynamite’s side, the deal makes a lot of sense, sure – It’s another outlet for their books, akin to ComiXology, iVerse, Nook and so on – but there’s something about Dark Horse becoming a retailer in the digital space that feels… important, perhaps? Especially considering that – when asked if DH would add other outside publishers, Mike Richardson said “We shall see about additional companies. Obviously we have always tried to attract comics professionals to our company.”

Dark Horse has always had an interesting history when it comes to other publishers; as a company, it started as an outgrowth of Richardson’s Things From Another World store, and today it offers merchandise licensed from other publishers on a regular basis, so clearly collaboration is in its DNA. I wonder if Dark Horse Digital, if it continues to add other publishers, will end up becoming Things From Another World Digital, or something else altogether…?

(Also, anytime they can offer a Digital App for the Kindle, I’d be all about that, too. Just sayin’.)

I’m still mulling over DC’s pulling out of the monthly Q&A column with Bob Harras and Bobbie Chase over at CBR. On the one hand, it’s pretty much the definition of a PR own goal to open yourself up to fan questions and then, four months later, quit because some of those questions were things that you didn’t want to talk about. On the other, as Heidi Macdonald wrote yesterday, only in comics would we expect upper editorial executives to subject themselves to monthly questions from their readership. To go further, only in Big Two comics would we expect that, because of the way Marvel interacts with readers and the press; we don’t see the decision makers from Dark Horse, IDW or Image undergo regularly scheduled interrogations, and I’m not sure anyone really expects them to, either.

What happened with the short-lived B&B column highlights the difference in… slickness, perhaps, between DC and Marvel, I think; Marvel is just better at managing the audience, their expectations, and making it look seamless. Axel Alonso’s weekly Axel-in-Charge column is pretty much the same thing as the B&B column – A combination of responding to softball questions with vague and meaningless responses and promoting upcoming product -  but the tone is different, somehow, and that’s the all-important thing: Alonso seems relaxed and engaged with the audience, even when he’s just saying “No plans for [whatever is being asked for]” or “Wait and see!” over and over again, whereas Harras and Chase seemed to be trying to hard, and selling too hard. I’m curious to see how Alonso – or Tom Brevoort, for that matter, who’s pretty much a model for how to communicate with fans online and has been for some time – would’ve responded to the Jerry Ordway question that seems to be at the center of DC’s decision to pull the column; I’m convinced it would’ve been something that would have felt sympathetic and appropriate, at least.

What the takeaway from this is, I’m unsure as yet. Maybe that DC needs to find different ways to engage its audience (or different people, perhaps)? Perhaps that Marvel outreach – Something that can be traced back to Stan back at the start of the company, via the Bullpen Bulletins and letter columns – has skewed our expectations of what to expect from comic executives?

While the Age of Ultron: UC solicit will grab a lot of attention in the latest Marvel solicits, I’ll suggest that the solicit for Indestructible Hulk #11 might be the one that’s really worth paying attention to:

“TIME TO SMASH” PART 1!
• Spinning out of the events of Age of Ultron!
Hulk’s sent on his most dangerous mission yet, working for a secret subdivision of S.H.I.E.L.D.!
History’s breaking–and only the Hulk is strong enough to hold it together!

“History’s breaking” is a particularly interesting thing to say – Not just in light of Age of Ultron, but also Bendis’ All-New X-Men. It’s been amusing to me that a relaunch called “Marvel NOW!” had such stock in time-travel, but I always wondered whether that was coincidence or intent. In light of Age of Ultron, I’m beginning to suspect the latter, and with this solicit, I’m starting to wonder whether this is all leading…

Douglas Ernst, a blogger who promises “bareknuckled conservatism mixed with pop-culture,” wasn’t too impressed with recent developments in Superior Spider-Man:

Readers could have had an instance where Doc Ock killed while in Peter’s body in a way that left even Peter haunted by the fact that the right thing was done in an impossible situation. Pete would have forever asked himself: “What would I have done?” Instead, everything is clearly spelled out: Doctor Octopus did the wrong thing because he executed a defenseless man without a trial by jury… After six issues of the Superior Spider-Man, it is more apparent than ever that the decision to kill off The Amazing Spider-Man in the manner Mr. Slott did was not worth the cost in good will towards Marvel. For every interesting morsel readers are given to chew on, there are mouthfuls of spoiled stale ideas that remind them why “Superior” is vastly inferior to its predecessor.

Dan Slott didn’t react well:

You are an IDIOT.

I’m not saying that BECAUSE you are a Conservative Blogger.

Everyone is entitled to their own political beliefs.

I’m saying that BECAUSE you, specifically– independent of the fact you’re a Conservative Blogger– ARE an idiot.

When someone’s beliefs/ideologies/presuppositions BLIND them to their own hypocrisies– WHEREVER those beliefs/ideologies/presuppositions lie– CONSERVATIVE, LIBERAL, or WHAT-HAVE-YOU– THOSE PEOPLE (like yourself) ARE COMPLETE AND UTTER IDIOTS.

Congratulations.

You are NOT a rational, thinking human being. You’re an idiot who’s had their brain removed and filled with the pap/preconceived-notions/rhetoric/propaganda/talking-points of others.

There is no talking, conversing, or reasoning with you. Enjoy your idiocy by yourself and those stupid enough to endure it, you brain dead ideologue.

There is more on both sides, especially regarding a side-snark Ernst made about Superior apparently not selling well in his neck of the woods because he could find the last couple of issues of the series – I suspect his mind may be blown by comic stores that have back issues of all the major books available – and Slott’s response to that, but it doesn’t matter; by responding to him in such an overblown manner, Slott has given Ernst just what he wanted, as evidenced by a new post on Ernst’s site:

It says something about a guy who thinks that because he writes the word ‘idiot’ multiple times and uses the caps lock key then what he’s saying must be true… Dan’s argument boils down to: “idiot-idiot-idiot-idiot-stupid-brain dead.” And yet, I’m supposedly the one who is “not rational”? Good one, Dan.

“Don’t feed the trolls” is a well-known Internet mantra for good reason. But maybe we should offer an amended version to some comic creators: “Don’t feed the trolls exactly what they want from you, like massively over-reacting to a bad review by calling the reviewer an idiot multiple times, for the love of Pete.”

So, Iron Man 3 will have exclusive footage when it’s released in China, it was announced last week. That news led to this somewhat staggering animation from the people at Next Media Animation:

That American audition scene in particular is a little brutal, isn’t it…?

iFanboy’s Ryan Haupt wants comic fans to get extreme to show that reading comics is cool! Or something:

Practically, what I think we ought to do is develop hobbies that seem out of step with normal comics reading, then use those hobbies to show that people who read comics are also out in the world doing cool stuff. I realize this is a bit silly, because we all know the stereotype is wrong, but at the same time what’s wrong with developing a fun new pastime AND getting to show off your comics cred while doing it. One stone, many birds.

I genuinely have to wonder what “comics cred” is. Is it the thing that’s behind accusations of “fake geeks”? Is it important to have “comics cred” as opposed to just reading comics? Is it something that makes you feel self-conscious enough about reading comics that you also want to have a hobby that shows other people that you “are also out in the world doing cool stuff”?

I get the comics culture is still, despite the widespread mainstream acceptance of comic characters, storytelling and ideas, essentially the culture of underdogs; that mindset dies hard, especially when actual comics still sell relatively poorly – Although the market is growing, and things aren’t that bad when you consider the print publishing industry in general, but who needs context? – but, still.

Reading comics is just reading comics; worrying about credibility or having cool hobbies or everything else is just weird additional baggage that we’re bringing to it ourselves. Instead of trying to prove that we’re extreme and awesome, why not just stop second guessing how we compare with other people in some meaningless ranking system that doesn’t exist?

Brian Cronin looks at the deal ComiXology offers creators with its ComiXology Submit program:

The intellectual property ownership sections of the agreement in particular are strongly in favor of the comic creator. There does not seem to be anything to worry about there. It is also good to know that the agreement is not exclusive, so you can continue to sell your work elsewhere online. However, it is worth noting that the term of the agreement is for five years, which is a rather long time to be tied to comiXology, especially if you find yourself feeling that you could get a better deal elsewhere. Which is why it is all the more important that you consider the two questions above. It is important to point out that the agreement only applies once you have actually submitted your final content to comiXology, so you have until that point to back out if you do not wish to lock yourself in to the deal for five years.

There’s some interesting stuff in there about pricing, especially what ComiXology can do in regards to promotional pricing, but overall this appears to be a pretty legit contract for creators interested in going into the digital space…

We live in a world where the porn version of Wonder Woman exists before any “official” live-action version of the character (Well, outside of the 1970s Lynda Carter version, of course), as well as a world where, let’s be honest: This actually looks more “Wonder Woman”-y than David E. Kelley’s NBC pilot from a couple years ago.

In the email accompanying this pic of Kimberly Kane that went to Ain’t It Cool News, Wonder Woman XXX: An Axel Braun Parody director Braun reportedly wrote “David E Kelley can Kiss My Ass ” Maybe the CW should ask Braun to help out on their in-development Wonder Woman pilot…

Print and digital comics will always coexist. When I first broke into comics, there was a trade paperback revolution, when multiple issues of most comics started being collected for sale in bookstores, etc. A lot of people thought that would be the death of serialized comics, as monthly readers would inevitably all start “waiting for the trade.” But instead, it created a whole new audience of readers who might never visit a comic-book store for their weekly fix, but who loved picking up collected editions at Barnes & Noble or on Amazon. Similarly, the digital market doesn’t seem to be cannibalizing the print market. For example, as the sales numbers for the digital edition of “Saga” go up every month, so do the numbers for our print versions. It’s a brave new world out there.

Brian K. Vaughan is talking about The Private Eye, Panel Syndicate and digital and print comics over at the New York Times, which – y’know, is something.

So, who’s doing Action Comics now that Andy Diggle has left the title? All those who said “Tony Daniel, right…?” the answer is, not really:

Yes, many have heard, Andy Diggle left Action Comics after the first issue. I can only say I feel bad he made that decision. I think it was the wrong one, but that was his choice to make. For the remainder of the arc I’ll be working off his plots to finish out this first arc. So essentially, I become ‘scripter’ in the credits w/ Andy as ‘plotter.’ As for myself, I end my short run after I complete this first arc, which ends with issue 21. This was preplanned since last fall as there is another project I’ll be taking on, and assisting with, a massive project with DC. I still think people will like this arc and I’m staying as true as I can be to Andy’s plans for this story. In the end I hope he’ll find it somewhat recognizable as something he took part in.

So, Daniel’s off the book after three issues. That means, come #22 – that’s the July issue, or the issue in the very next round of solicitations – we’ll get an all-new Action team. But who?

Rich Johnston wants you all to know that he knows something that he’s not supposed to:

Everyone seems to think I love to spoil stories but it’s just not true, when I discovered one aspect to the ending of Age Of Ultron after the Marvel Summit, they asked me not to run it, so I didn’t (even though it screams at me from this month’s solicitations- could only eight people really know this one?)… Later, however, I was told a different aspect to the ending, which caused Marvel to properly panic when I shared with Marvel that I knew it – or at least a part of it – and I was told there were all sorts of legal implications if this story got spoiled by me.

Of course, saying “I know the ending but I can’t tell you” means that (a) Rich gets bragging rights without having to actually prove that he knows anything, and (b) all those who care about guessing the ending go wild at the tease, and try and decipher the clues (In addition to the “It screams at me from this month’s solicitations,” Rich also adds later the phrase “An unexpected guest star joining the Marvel Universe,” which would suggest someone who’s never shown up in a Marvel Comic before. Finally, Marvelman?), which seems to be a win-win scenario for all involved – including Marvel, who essentially get PR for Age of Ultron at no risk, because nothing actually gets spoiled. Everybody wins?

Hey, maybe I should start boasting that I know the ends to stories. I know how DC’s Trinity War en – Nah, I don’t even know how that even starts, yet.